Clinical and laboratory features of COVID-19 illness and outcomes in immunocompromised individuals during the first pandemic wave in Sydney, Australia

Nila J Dharan; Sarah C Sasson; Golo Ahlenstiel; Christopher R Andersen; Mark Bloch; Griselda Buckland; Nada Hamad; Win Min Han; Anthony D Kelleher; Georgina V Long; Gail V Matthews; Michael M Mina; Emmanuelle Papot; Kathy Petoumenos; Sanjay Swaminathan; Barbara Withers; James Yun; Mark N Polizzotto; CORIA Study Group

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0289907

Clinical and laboratory features of COVID-19 illness and outcomes in immunocompromised individuals during the first pandemic wave in Sydney, Australia

PLoS One. 2023 Nov 1;18(11):e0289907. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289907. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Nila J Dharan¹, Sarah C Sasson^{1

2

3}, Golo Ahlenstiel^{4

5}, Christopher R Andersen^{6

7}, Mark Bloch^{1

8}, Griselda Buckland¹, Nada Hamad^{9

10

11}, Win Min Han¹, Anthony D Kelleher^{1

9}, Georgina V Long^{6

12

13}, Gail V Matthews^{1

9}, Michael M Mina¹⁴, Emmanuelle Papot¹, Kathy Petoumenos¹, Sanjay Swaminathan^{3

4

5}, Barbara Withers⁹, James Yun^{11

15}, Mark N Polizzotto^{1

9

16}; CORIA Study Group

Affiliations

¹ Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
² NSW Health Pathology, Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia.
³ Westmead Hospital, Westmead, New South Wales, Australia.
⁴ Blacktown Hospital, Blacktown, New South Wales, Australia.
⁵ Western Sydney University, Penrith, New South Wales, Australia.
⁶ Royal North Shore Hospital, St Leonards, New South Wales, Australia.
⁷ The George Institute for Global Health, Newtown, New South Wales, Australia.
⁸ Holdsworth House Medical Practice, Darlinghurst, New South Wales, Australia.
⁹ St Vincent's Hospital, Darlinghurst, New South Wales, Australia.
¹⁰ School of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of New South Wales Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
¹¹ School of Medicine, Sydney, University of Notre Dame, Chippendale, New South Wales, Australia.
¹² Melanoma Institute Australia, Wollstonecraft, New South Wales, Australia.
¹³ The Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
¹⁴ Northern Beaches Hospital, Frenchs Forest, New South Wales, Australia.
¹⁵ Nepean Hospital, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia.
¹⁶ Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.

Abstract

People with immunocompromising conditions are at increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and mortality, however early in the pandemic it was challenging to collate data on this heterogenous population. We conducted a registry study of immunocompromised individuals with polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection from March-October 2020 in Sydney, Australia to understand clinical and laboratory outcomes in this population prior to the emergence of the Delta variant. 27 participants were enrolled into the study including people with a haematologic oncologic conditions (n = 12), secondary immunosuppression (N = 8) and those with primary or acquired immunodeficiency (i.e. HIV; N = 7). All participants had symptomatic COVID-19 with the most common features being cough (64%), fever (52%) and headache (40%). Five patients demonstrated delayed SARS-CoV-2 clearance lasting three weeks to three months. The mortality rate in this study was 7% compared to 1.3% in the state of New South Wales Australia during the same period. This study provides data from the first eight months of the pandemic on COVID-19 outcomes in at-risk patient groups.

Copyright: © 2023 Dharan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Australia / epidemiology
COVID-19* / epidemiology
Humans
Pandemics
SARS-CoV-2

Supplementary concepts

SARS-CoV-2 variants

Grants and funding

We confirm that this work is not under active consideration for publication, has not been accepted for publication, nor has it been published, in full or in part. It has not had any prior interactions with PLOS. I confirm that the study has been approved by the St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee, an institutional ethics committee, and was granted a waiver of the need for individual consent for data collection as per the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research. The study was registered at Clinicaltrials.gov (NCT04354818). This work was funded by an unrestricted scientific grant from Gilead Sciences. This work was funded by an unrestricted scientific grant from Gilead Sciences. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”.