Two Months Follow-Up of 139 Unvaccinated COVID-19 Patients Based on Clinical and Imaging Data

To understand the effects of COVID-19 vaccines it would be essential to have knowledge about the effects of the disease during the time that vaccines were unavailable. Hence, we tracked the clinical outcomes of Iranian COVID-19 patients during Feb 19th till May 1st 2020 by a longitudinal follow-up study of patients discharged from a university hospital in Iran.

Demographic, clinical, and paraclinical data (chest CT scan imaging, and RT-PCR tests) of 139 patients were collected at the admission time. Preliminary clinical, radiological, laboratory, treatment information, and follow up results were extracted and collected from patients' records.

The mean age of the patients was 60.56±16.32 years. The most common symptoms on admission were dyspnea (79.1%), coughing (77.3%) and fever (73.1%). The common radiological pattern was multifocal patchy ground-glass infiltration. The patients were followed-up for 8 weeks by phone call. During discharge, 24.8% of the patients had no symptoms, the common residue symptoms were weakness and malaise (48.2%), dyspnea (38.7%), coughing (20.4%), hyposmia (18.5%). On week 8, 74.6% of the patients had no symptom. Moreover, 47.14% of CT scan results improved after 4 weeks and 43.39% after 8 weeks.

Further follow-up studies are required to determine other detrimental illnesses related to the disease and how vaccination against COVID-19 can affect them.