Earlier diagnosis improves COVID-19 prognosis: a nationwide retrospective cohort analysis

Background Risk of adverse outcomes in COVID-19 patients by stratifying by the time from symptom onset to confirmed diagnosis status is still uncertain. Methods We included 1,590 hospitalized COVID-19 patients confirmed by real-time RT-PCR assay or high-throughput sequencing of pharyngeal and nasal swab specimens from 575 hospitals across China between 11 December 2019 and 31 January 2020. Times from symptom onset to confirmed diagnosis, from symptom onset to first medical visit and from first medical visit to confirmed diagnosis were described and turned into binary variables by the maximally selected rank statistics method. Then, survival analysis, including a log-rank test, Cox regression, and conditional inference tree (CTREE) was conducted, regarding whether patients progressed to a severe disease level during the observational period (assessed as severe pneumonia according to the Chinese Expert Consensus on Clinical Practice for Emergency Severe Pneumonia, admission to an intensive care unit, administration of invasive ventilation, or death) as the prognosis outcome, the dependent variable. Independent factors included whether the time from symptom onset to confirmed diagnosis was longer than 5 days (the exposure) and other demographic and clinical factors as multivariate adjustments. The clinical characteristics of the patients with different times from symptom onset to confirmed diagnosis were also compared. Results The medians of the times from symptom onset to confirmed diagnosis, from symptom onset to first medical visit, and from first medical visit to confirmed diagnosis were 6, 3, and 2 days. After adjusting for age, sex, smoking status, and comorbidity status, age [hazard ratio (HR): 1.03; 95% CI: 1.01-1.04], comorbidity (HR: 1.84; 95% CI: 1.23-2.73), and a duration from symptom onset to confirmed diagnosis of >5 days (HR: 1.69; 95% CI: 1.10-2.60) were independent predictors of COVID-19 prognosis, which echoed the CTREE models, with significant nodes such as time from symptom onset to confirmed diagnosis, age, and comorbidities. Males, older patients with symptoms such as dry cough/productive cough/shortness of breath, and prior COPD were observed more often in the patients who procrastinated before initiating the first medical consultation. Conclusions A longer time from symptom onset to confirmed diagnosis yielded a worse COVID-19 prognosis.