Abstract
Assess the survival of hospitalized coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients across age groups, sex, use of mechanical ventilators (MVs), nationality, and intensive care unit (ICU) admission in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Data were retrieved from the Saudi Ministry of Health (MoH) between 1 March and 29 May 2020. Kaplan-Meier (KM) analyses and multiple Cox proportional-hazards regression were conducted to assess the survival of hospitalized COVID-19 patients from hospital admission to discharge (censored) or death. Micro-costing was used to estimate the direct medical costs associated with hospitalization per patient.
The number of included patients with complete status (discharge or death) was 1422. The overall 14-day survival was 0.699 (95%CI: 0.652-0.741). Older adults (>70 years) (HR = 5.00, 95%CI = 2.83-8.91), patients on MVs (5.39, 3.83-7.64), non-Saudi patients (1.37, 1.01-1.89), and ICU admission (2.09, 1.49-2.93) were associated with a high risk of mortality. The mean cost per patient (in SAR) for those admitted to the general Medical Ward (GMW) and ICU was 42,704.49 ± 29,811.25 and 79,418.30 ± 55,647.69, respectively.
The high hospitalization costs for COVID-19 patients represents a significant public health challenge. Efficient allocation of healthcare resources cannot be emphasized enough.