Comorbidities associated with Covid-19 in hospital patients in the Sierra and Coast region of Ecuador

Abstract

The first case of COVID-19 in Ecuador was reported on February 29, 2020. The government immediately implemented measures to combat the disease, but during the first months the virus spread rapidly in the coastal provinces due to the lack of actions based on evidence and adapted to the local epidemiological situation due to the absence of an open data system. For this reason, the main objective of this research is to find information on comorbidities associated with COVID-19 in hospitalized patients in the Sierra and Costa del Ecuador. The methodology consisted of collecting information from official sources on the number of infections, deaths and tests carried out to compare the rates of positivity, lethality, and mortality at the local level; A systematic bibliographic review was carried out, in which information searches were carried out in articles published in 2020, because the subject is a recent disease. The information was obtained through various reliable sources such as Elsevier, PubMed, Scielo and the World Health Organization (WHO), among others. The results show that in Ecuador the main comorbidities with severity presented by COVID-19 patients, the most common are arterial hypertension, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and HIV. In conclusion, it has not been possible to effectively control the pandemic, so it is extremely urgent to strengthen its health system and epidemiological surveillance.