April 29, 2020

ISARIC 4C study – characterising the clinical features of patients with severe COVID-19 in the UK

What kind of people end up most severely ill with COVID-19?  We have already heard about sex differences, age effects and which co-morbidities are associated with becoming severely ill with COVID-19.

The ISARIC study has looked at data from 166 UK hospitals in the UK and presents information about the age, sex, and underlying diseases of 16,749 patients; the symptoms they had; and the proportion that needed intensive care treatment, survived, and died.

* Please note this study is a preprint, so it is a preliminary piece of research that has not yet been through peer review and has not been published in a scientific journal – so this is early data. *

More information about the ISARIC 4C (Coronavirus Clinical Characterisation Consortium) can be seen here: isaric4c.net

Journalists dialed in to this briefing to hear the authors describe their findings.

Speakers included:

Prof Calum Semple, Professor in Child Health and Outbreak Medicine, University of Liverpool, and chief investigator

Dr Kenneth Baillie, Academic Consultant in Critical Care Medicine, Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh, and consortium lead

Prof Peter Openshaw, Professor of Experimental Medicine, Imperial College London, and co-lead of the study

Dr Annemarie Docherty, Wellcome Clinical Research Career Development Fellow and an Honorary Consultant in Critical Care, University of Edinburgh

An SMC Roundup accompanied this briefing.