How Would Coronavirus Affect You? UC Irvine Makes Bold Prediction

IRVINE, CA —Is it possible to predict how the population will be affected by coronavirus as the nation opens up again? UCI Health says it has developed, validated and deployed a computational tool to do just that.

On Thursday, the university says they can now predict and identify patients vulnerable to COVID-19 severe outcomes. Their findings, led by principal investigator Peter Chang, MD, were originally published in medRxiv.

The tool can predict those who are likely to need critical care, mechanical breathing assistance, or even predict who will likely die of COVID-19.

"The modeling tool will ultimately buy precious time in treating those afflicted with the virus," according to a statement. The tool itself has been validated at UCI and on a smaller cohort from Emory Healthcare in Atlanta. What's more, the tool updates continually, allowing for weekly improvements, they say.

Gender, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and a handful of inflammatory biomarkers seem to be some of the most significant contributing factors as to whether a COVID-19 patient will require care for a critical disease when he or she reaches the hospital, according to the UCI Health study.

A total of 3,408 patients were involved in the study, 299 of which tested positive for COVID-19.

The researchers then concluded the factors associated with the most significant risk of critical COVID-19 outcomes was the number of preexisting conditions a patient already has prior to infection. The worst of which include: obesity, hypertension, and diabetes.

Men also were more likely than women of having a higher risk of critical disease occurrence, the statement said.

According to the statement, other tests tended to show those most likely to have a critical disease included respiratory rate and white blood cell count.

The UCI Health is part of UC Irvine, and its teaching hospital, UCI Medical Center in Orange.

City News Service, Patch staffer Ashley Ludwig contributed to this report.

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