Comparison of Clinical, Hematological and Biochemical Characteristics of Patients Suffering from Delta and Non-Delta Variant of COVID-19

Objective: To compare the clinical, hematological and biochemical characteristics of patients suffering from delta and non-delta variants of COVID-19. Method: This cross-sectional study was conducted at Farooq Hospital Westwood Lahore during 1st March 2022 to 31st August 2022. After obtaining informed written consent, nasopharyngeal swabs and 5 ml of blood samples in both EDTA and clotted vacutainers of eighty two infected patients with COVID-19, who were admitted in COVID-19 unit, were collected. The viral nucleic acid was isolated from nasopharyngeal swabs by using a Qiagen nucleic acid extraction kit. RT-PCR was performed to detect the delta variant in COVID-19 infected patients by using SARS-CoV-2 Variant B.1.617 identification kit. Further hematological and biochemical parameters were performed. Results: We did a comparative analysis of clinical and laboratory characteristic of delta and non-delta COVID19 patients admitted in Farooq Hospital Westwood, confirmed by RT-PCR and found that patients presented with delta variant had more severe disease with significantly more cough, fever, shortness of breath and lower SpO2 at the presentation. The hematological and biochemical markers showed more lymphopenia, greater CRP,Interleukin 6,LDHand ferritin.Hospitalstay of delta variants ofCOVID-19 patients had longer duration as compared to the non-delta COVID-19 patients. Conclusion: Delta COVID-19 had more severe disease with more dyspnea, hypoxia, hematological and biochemical parameters abnormalities compared to the non-delta COVID-19 patients. Patients suffering from delta variant of COVID-19 had greater length of hospital stay as compared to the non-delta variant of COVID-19 with more oxygen requirement and more mortality rate.