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Background: older people contributed to 38.6% of death cases related to COVID-19 in Indonesia. Data regarding clinical profile of hospitalised elderly with COVID-19 in Indonesia were still lacking. Older people are at-risk population in the pandemic, whom we should pay attention to. Methods: this single centre descriptive study utilised complete data of elderly inpatients with COVID-19 in Indonesia’s national general hospital from April to late August 2020. The data consisted of clinical characteristics, symptoms, comorbidities, multimorbidity, and mortality outcome. Results: among elderly patients (n=44), a majority of patients were aged 60-69 years (68%), were male (66%), and had no history of close contact with COVID-19 patient (86%). The most common symptoms were fever, cough and shortness of breath (classic symptoms of COVID-19), whereas the most common chronic diseases were diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and malignancy. Multimorbidity was only found in 14% of patients, all of whom remained alive following SARS-CoV-2 infection. The death rate among elderly inpatients with COVID-19 in this study was 23%, and male older adults contributed to 90% of death cases. Conclusion: male patients dominated both confirmed cases and death cases among elderly with COVID-19. Classic symptoms of COVID-19 were only found in about half of the study patients. Non-survivors had higher percentage of the classic symptoms of COVID-19 than survivors. Atypical COVID-19 presentations are possible in older adults. We postulated that immunosenescence and sex-specific immunoregulatory function play an important role in causing death in this study cohort. |
