Epidemiology and clinical characteristics of patients after recovery from COVID-19 infection in Erbil government, Iraq

Background and objective: Preliminary reports indicate some patients may develop a post-COVID-19 syndrome, in which they experience persistent symptoms after recovering from their initial illness. So, we investigated the persistent symptoms of patients after recovery from COVID-19 that attended a private clinic in Erbil city searching for care. Therefore, this study aimed to describe the demographic features of the patients, identify the clinical features of the patients after recovery and find associations between clinical and demographic features. Methods: This is a case series of a private clinic study, which was done in Erbil city. We reviewed patients who had been diagnosed with COVID-19 and were referred to the clinic from July 31st to December 1st, 2020, in Erbil, Iraq. Results: In this study, 154 post-recovered COVID-19 patients who attended the center during the six months of the study were enrolled. The mean age of the patients significantly increased with increased severity (P <0.001). A significant statistical association was also found between marital and smoking status with the severity of post-COVID-19 in which married patients developed more severe cases than non-married patients (P = 0.03). Also, cigarette smokers developed less severe clinical features than non-smokers (P = 0.005). The most frequent comorbidity among patients was hypertension (23%), while the least comorbidity was stroke, hyperthyroidism, renal failure, migraine, and osteoarthritis (0.7%). Conclusion: Significant statistical associations were found between the severity of the post-COVID-19 condition with many variables, including the mean age of the patients, marital status, and smoking status. The most frequent comorbidity was hypertension, and the least frequent was stroke. Keywords: Post-COVID-19 syndrome; Case series study; Comorbidity; Erbil city.