Table 1.
Baseline sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of non-COVID patients and comparison between COVID and Pre-COVID periods. Pre-COVID-19 period: March 2018 to February 2020; COVID-19: March 2020 to February 2021. SD: standard deviation. * p-values express the presence of statistically significant differences between the two periods (t-test for continuous variables, chi-square test for categorical).
| Pre-COVID-19 Period N (%) |
COVID-19 Period N (%) |
p Value * | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall episodes | 28,622 | 11,904 | |
| Age, mean (SD) | 66.93 (19.70) | 66.40 (20.07) | 0.099 |
| Sex, n (%) | |||
| Women, n (%) | 12,857 (44.9) | 5324 (44.7) | 0.130 |
| Men, n (%) | 15,765 (55.1) | 6580 (55.3) | |
| Charlson Comorbidity index, n (%) | |||
| 0 | 11,899 (41.6) | 5108 (43.0) | 0.030 |
| 1 | 5458 (19.1) | 2255 (19.9) | |
| 2 | 3873 (13.5) | 1590 (13.4) | |
| ≥3 | 7386 (25.8) | 2923 (24.6) | |
| Source of hospital admission, n (%) | |||
| Home | 17,266 (60.4) | 7572 (63.6) | <0.0001 |
| Primary Care | 1822 (6.4) | 627 (5.3) | |
| Primary Care Emergency | 632 (2.2) | 448 (3.8) | |
| Nursing home | 306 (1.1) | 120 (1.0) | |
| Street | 1786 (6.2) | 358 (3.0) | |
| Other hospital | 5199 (18.2) | 2173 (18.3) | |
| Others | 1558 (5.4) | 599 (5.0) | |
| Unknown | 26 (0.1) | 7 (0.1) |