Study of epidemiological, clinical and evolutionary characteristics of a population of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 in Morocco

¹ Mohammed 6 University of Health Sciences, Casablanca - Morocco ;
² Ibn Tofaïl University-CNESTEN, Joint Research Unit in Nutrition, Health and Environment, RDC-Nutrition AFRA/IAEA, Laboratory Biology and Health, 14000 Kenitra, Morocco ;
³ Hassan First University of Settat, Higher Institute of Health Sciences of Settat, Laboratory of Health Sciences and Technology, Morocco ;
⁴ Laboratory of Community Health, Preventive Medicine and Hygiene & Laboratory of Epidemiology and Clinical Research, Department of Public Heath, Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy, University Mohammed V in Rabat ;
⁵ Center of Virology, Infectious and Tropical Diseases, Mohammed V Military Hospital, Rabat, Morocco ;
⁶ Inserm Research Center, U1231 INSERM/UB/AgroSup, Team-Physiology of Nutrition & Toxicology, University of Bourgogne Franche-Comté (UBFC), Faculty of Life Sciences, 6 Boulevard Gabriel, 21000 Dijon, France ;
⁷ Functional Genomic Platform, UATRS-CNRST. Rabat, Morocco ;
⁸ Health and Nutrition Research Team of the Mother-Child Couple, Faculty of Medicine, Mohammed 5th University. 10100. Rabat. Morocco ; barakatamina@hotmail.fr
⁹ Moroccan society of nutrition, health and environment-Casablanca, Morocco ;

^* Corresponding author: amina.bouziani@uit.ac.ma

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 still represents a real risk for the increased death rate for the whole of human kind. In this context, the present research work aims at describing evolutionary data in a population of hospitalized COVID-19 positive patients based on selected epidemiological, clinical and paraclinical data at admission. In this cross-sectional study, we examined the data obtained from 108 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in the VINCI clinic, Casablanca (Morocco) between August and September 2020. General characteristic, clinical, radiological and biological data as well as therapeutic management were assessed. The patients’ median age was 45-50 years old. Among our studied patients, 4.6% were transferred to the intensive care unit (ICU), 16.7% were cured after more than 15 days, while 78.7% were cured within 15 days. Those transferred to the ICU unit were either smokers, obese, or over 65 years of age. The majority of patients with normal radiological and cardiac parameters were cured within<15 days, while biological disorders were observed in approximately all cases that were transferred to ICU. Regarding therapeutic treatment, 98.1% of the subjects were treated with hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin in combination with vitamin C and zinc supplementation. The study shows that the minimal healing time is well conditioned by the general and clinical characteristics of patients. Furthermore, the administration of hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin showed a beneficial effect with no associated adverse effects in the study cases.