If You Don’t Know the Four Conditions Responsible for Most COVID-19 Admissions, You Should

Even though the increasing number of approved vaccines is grabbing the headlines these days, the hard truth is that millions of Americans continue to become infected with the COVID-19 virus. An unacceptably high number of those patients require a stay in the hospital, where the risk of mortality is still relatively high compared with patients who do not need to be admitted. Thankfully, new research continues to shed light on which patients are at the greatest risk. Identifying those patients who present to urgent care early so they can get the necessary attention and care is essential in curbing risk for mortality. One of the most recent pieces of research, published by the Journal of the American Heart Association, identifies obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart failure as being major culprits in predicting the need for hospitalization among patients with COVID-19. All told, patients with at least one of those conditions account for 64% of COVID-19 hospitalizations. Obesity is the biggest risk factor, with 30% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients being categorized as obese, followed by hypertension (26%), diabetes (21%), and heart failure (12%). The data reflect 906,849 COVID-19 hospitalizations in November 2020.