Enhanced surveillance of hospitalised COVID-19 patients in Europe: I-MOVE-COVID-19 surveillance network, February 2020 to December 2021

Abstract

What did you want to address in this study?

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, in hospital surveillance of respiratory infection such as influenza, was expanded to include patients with COVID-19, and to monitor the seriousness of their disease. We wanted to understand the characteristics and risk factors for severe disease in patients hospitalised with COVID-19 in nine countries in Europe during the first 2 years of the pandemic.

What have we learnt from this study?

We showed that among hospitalised patients with COVID-19, males, patients with two or more other long-term conditions and patients aged 75 years and older, were more likely to have more serious disease. Over the course of the pandemic, the number of hospital admissions and the characteristics of patients were highly variable. This was probably because public health measures, vaccination coverage, circulation of SARS-CoV-2 variants and pressures in hospitals varied widely over time and between countries.

What are the implications of your findings for public health?

This surveillance system enabled the collection of data to understand what types of patients were being admitted to hospital with COVID-19 during the pandemic. The system was rapidly adapted by a network of European countries and could be used for similar situations in the future.

Rights

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2023.28.26.2200669