PROGNOSIS

The severity of COVID‑19 varies. The disease may take a mild course with few or no symptoms, resembling other common upper respiratory diseases such as the common cold. Mild cases typically recover within two weeks, while those with severe or critical diseases may take three to six weeks to recover. Among those who have died, the time from symptom onset to death has ranged from two to eight weeks.

Children make up a small proportion of reported cases, with about 1% of cases being under 10 years and 4% aged 10–19 years They are likely to have milder symptoms and a lower chance of severe disease than adults; in those younger than 50 years the risk of death is less than 0.5%, while in those older than 70 it is more than 8%.

Pregnant women may be at higher risk for severe infection with COVID-19 based on data from other similar viruses, like SARS and MERS, but data for COVID-19 is lacking. In China, children acquired infections mainly through close contact with their parents or other family members who lived in Wuhan or had traveled there.

Most of those who die of COVID‑19 have pre-existing (underlying) conditions, including hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and cardiovascular disease. The Istituto Superiore di Sanità reported that out of 8.8% of deaths where medical charts were available for review, 97.2% of sampled patients had at least one comorbidity with the average patient having 2.7 diseases.

According to the same report, the median time between the onset of symptoms and death was ten days, with five being spent hospitalised. However, patients transferred to an ICU had a median time of seven days between hospitalization and death. In a study of early cases, the median time from exhibiting initial symptoms to death was 14 days, with a full range of six to 41 days. In a study by the National Health Commission (NHC) of China, men had a death rate of 2.8% while women had a death rate of 1.7%. Histopathological examinations of post-mortem lung samples show diffuse alveolar damage with cellular fibromyxoid exudates in both lungs. Viral cytopathic changes were observed in the pneumocytes.

The lung picture resembled acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). In 11.8% of the deaths reported by the National Health Commission of China, heart damage was noted by elevated levels of troponin or cardiac arrest. According to March data from the United States, 89% of those hospitalized had preexisting conditions.

prognosis – * an opinion, based on medical experience, of the likely course of a medical condition.

* a forecast of the likely outcome of a situation.