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. 2024 Nov 29;36(1):228.
doi: 10.1007/s40520-024-02884-7.

Electronic health records reveal that COVID-19 impacted health resources and survival of Basque population

Sara Cruces-Salguero  1 , Igor Larrañaga  2   3 , Javier Mar  2   3   4 , Ander Matheu  5   6   7
Affiliations

Electronic health records reveal that COVID-19 impacted health resources and survival of Basque population

Sara Cruces-Salguero et al. Aging Clin Exp Res. .

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic impacted worldwide. The Basque Country was one of the regions in Spain most affected by the virus.

Methods: In this retrospective study, we took advantage of the Basque Health Service electronic health records data lake of over 20,000 deceased individuals, including 5000 positives for COVID-19, between 2020 and 2022 in Gipuzkoa (Basque Country, Spain).

Results: Comparison between COVID-19-positive and negative individuals' showed that the prevalence of infections was higher inside nursing homes and COVID-19 promoted a significant rise in hospitalizations, emergency entrances, and ICU admissions. No differences were observed between genders in terms of infections or survival but were detected in health resources and vaccination showed a strong protective effect against the disease.

Conclusions: Our results provided a complete characterization of the impact of COVID-19 on the Basque population, which expands the knowledge of the pandemic on older individuals and the health system. Our study also highlights the benefit of the use of Electronic Health Records in studying human diseases.

Keywords: Electronic health records; Pandemic; Public health.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Conflict of interest: The authors declare no competing interests. Human and animal rights: This study was approved by the Basque Clinical Research Ethics Committee (CEIm-E code PI2020206) and adhered to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki by the World Medical Association regarding human experimentation. Informed consent: Given the anonymized nature of the database, the Ethics Committee waived the requirement of the signature of the informed consents.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Evolution of COVID-19 pandemic. A Evolution of COVID-19-positive cases and deaths during the pandemic. B Evolution of the use of hospitalizations, emergencies and ICU admissions during the pandemic. Only records that had a COVID-19 diagnosis associated were considered
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Survival analysis of COVID-19 30-day mortality. A Survival of men vs women. B Survival in function of Barthel index, from 1 (totally dependent) to 5 (independent). C Survival of vaccinated vs non-vaccinated individuals. D Cox regression of the main demographic variables
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