(182) A Retrospective Study to Compare Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) in Hypertension and Diabetes

Objective : To investigate the relationship between prior hypertension or diabetes comorbidities and COVID-19 vaccination status among patients admitted to the hospital with a COVID-19 diagnosis. 2) To investigate the relationship between prior hypertension and diabetes comorbidities and severity of COVID-19 infection.

Methods: : A retrospective cohort study of 19,331 adult patients diagnosed with COVID-19 and admitted to in-patient services at Ochsner Health between March 1, 2020 and March 31, 2022 was conducted. Data, including demographics, comorbidities, laboratory results, COVID-19 vaccination status, and severity of disease were collected from the electronic health record. Primary outcomes were COVID-19 vaccination status prior to admission and severity of disease assessed by length of in-patient stay, and risk of mortality. Comparisons were performed using the chi-square test or Fisher exact test for categorical variables and the Wilcoxon rank sum test for continuous variables.

Results: 36% of the patients had diabetes, 58.1% had hypertension, and 12.7% had received at least one COVID-19 vaccination upon admission. The average stay was 5 days and majority of patients had extreme severity of illness (95.4%) and risk of mortality (86.8%). Patients with comorbidities were slightly more likely to be vaccinated for COVID-19 at the time of admission than not. We also observed that patients with diabetes or hypertension and COVID-19 were more likely to have severe illness than not and a greater risk of mortality. Patients with comorbidities were more likely to stay longer in the hospital (p <.0001).

Conclusions: Our study shows that patients with diabetes or hypertension comorbidities were more likely to be vaccinated prior to admission than those without the comorbidity. However, having these diagnoses may worsen the outcome of COVID-19 infection.