The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Southern Hungary: Epidemiology, symptoms and signs

Abstract

BackgroundIn December 2019, pneumonia caused by coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) occurred in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. Currently, COVID-19 has spread worldwide. In accordance with the restrictions of the Hungarian Government, several epidemic hospitals and centers have been established in Hungary. The first infected patient was detected on 4th March, 2020 in our country, who was not a Hungarian citizen. The first patient died of pneumonia caused by COVID-19 was on 15th March. The Hungarian epidemic curve is flattened and more prolonged. We aimed to report our computer tomography (CT) findings in correlation with clinical status in patients with COVID-19 infection.Material and methodsAll patients with laboratory-identified Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection by real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and who underwent chest CT were collected between March 26, 2020, and April 20, 2020, in our hospital. In our centre we had 107 PCR confirmed COVID-19 positive patients in this period. 52 patient (male: female 1:2, average age: 67.94) were admitted to our central epidemic hospital, according to their complains: fever, dyspnoea, hypoxaemia, altered mental status, comorbidity, sepsis or if patient isolation could not be performed. In case of every patient we took blood test, nasopharyngeal sample and a chest CT without contrast agent. In our CT report we used a score system to characterize the severity.ResultsThe majority of infected patients had a history of exposure in nursing homes and mostly presented with fever and cough. The present study confirmed the findings about results of other researches. The COVID-19 pneumonia affected the elderly patients, caused hypoxia, cough and sepsis. On the CT scan, typical signs were seen in the cases of PCR confirmed patients.ConclusionThe limitations of the present study include the low number of patients. Collectively, our results appear consistent with previous studies. Chest CT examination plays an important role in the diagnosis and estimation of the severity of the novel coronavirus pneumonia. Future research should examine strategically the features of the Hungarian population.

Comparison of COVID-19 Severity and Mortality Rates in the First Four Epidemic Waves in Hungary in a Single-Center Study with Special Regard to Critically Ill Patients in an Intensive Care Unit

“…There was no statistically significant difference in in-hospital mortality between the surges. As for the symptoms, our results were similar to the findings of other national studies [ 32 , 33 ].…”

The Impact of Comorbidities and Obesity on the Severity and Outcome of COVID-19 in Hospitalized Patients—A Retrospective Study in a Hungarian Hospital

“…Several Hungarian studies have investigated the epidemiology, clinical features, and efficacy of therapies and vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 infection [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45]. However, to our knowledge, none of these involved the assessment of the impact of risk factors in a large, hospitalized population of COVID-19 patients.…”