Modeling Time to Recovery of Diabetic Patients from COVID-19: A Case Study at Eka Kotebe General Hospital COVID-19 isolation and treatment center, Addis Ababa Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: Corona virus 2019 (COVID-19) is a pandemic disease which is caused by SARS-Cov-2 and it emerged on December 31, 2019, in China. COVID-19 affects more patients with chronic diseases mainly diabetes. Those with diabetes were more likely to have serious complications and have delayed recovery time from the virus. One reason is that high blood sugar weakens the immune system and makes it less able to fight off infections. The main aim of this study was to model the time to recovery of diabetic patients from COVID-19 in Eka Kotebe General Hospital. Methods: A retrospective cohort study design was conducted on diabetic patients with COVID-19 whose age 18 years and above from March 20, 2020, to April 30, 2022 G.C, at Eka Kotebe General Hospital (EKGH), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Kaplan-Meier estimation method and log-rank tests, were used to compare the survival experience of different groups and also Cox proportional hazard model was employed to identify the covariates that have a statistically significant effect on the recovery time of diabetic patients from COVID-19 with the help of R software’s (R version 4.1.2) to analyze the data. Results: Out of 481 diabetic patients with COVID-19, 306 (63.62%) were recovered from COVID-19, with a minimum and maximum recovery times of 5 and 59 days, respectively. The median recovery time was 16 days with 95% confidence interval (15, 17). The multivariate Cox regression model analysis showed that patients whose age groups 36-55 (HR ˆ = 0.585, 95% CI: 0.404, 0.848), age groups > 55 (HR ˆ = 0.663, 95% CI: 0.445, 0.989), female patients (HR ˆ = 1.382, 95% CI: 1.061, 1.8), rural resident ((HR ˆ = 4.839, 95% CI: 2.82, 8.247), HIV (HR ˆ = 0.067, 95% CI: 0.024, 0.182), hypertension (HR ˆ = 0.38, 95% CI: 0.255, 0.567), symptom (HR ˆ = 0.514, 95% CI: 0.3, 0.881), asthma (HR ˆ = 0.491, 95% CI: 0.309, 0.78), stroke (HR ˆ = 0.508, 95% CI: 0.333, 0.776), TB (HR ˆ = 0.424, 95% CI: 0.277, 0.65), CLD (HR ˆ = 0.564, 95% CI: 0.356, 0.893), types of diabetes (type 2 diabetes (HR ˆ = 0.159, 95% CI: 0.107, 0.236) & Gestational diabetes (HR ˆ = 41.875, 95% CI: 9.279, 188.976)), and other co-factors (HR ˆ = 0.531, 95% CI: 0.398, 0.708) were statistically associated with time to recovery of diabetic patients from COVID-19. Conclusion & Recommendation: Finally, the findings of this study implied that factors like, age, sex, residence, HIV, hypertension, asthma, TB, stroke, CLD, and other co-factors were a major factors related to time to recovery of diabetic patients from COVID-19. Based on study results, it is recommended that health professionals should be give more attention to diabetic patients with HIV, hypertension, TB, stroke, asthma, CLD, types of DM, and other co-factors to control COVID-19.