Symptoms associated with a COVID-19 infection in the general population of Vienna
Abstract
Background
Most clinical studies report the symptoms experienced by those infected with Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) via patients already hospitalised. Here we analyse the symptoms experienced by the general population in Vienna.
Methods
The Vienna Social Fund (FSW, Vienna, Austria), the Public Health Services of the City of Vienna (MA15) and the private company Symptoma collaborated to implement Vienna’s official online COVID-19 symptom checker. Users answered 12 yes/no questions about symptoms to assess their risk for COVID-19. They could also specify their age and sex, and whether they had contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. Depending on the assessed risk of COVID-19 positivity, a SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) was performed. In this publication, we analysed which factors (symptoms, sex or age) are associated with COVID-19 positivity. We also trained a classifier to correctly predict COVID-19 positivity from the collected data.
Results
Between the 2nd of November 2020 and the 18th of November 2021, 9133 people experiencing COVID-19-like symptoms were assessed as high risk by the chatbot and were subsequently tested by a NAAT. Symptoms significantly associated with a positive COVID-19 test were malaise, fatigue, headache, cough, fever, dysgeusia and hyposmia. Our classifier could successfully predict COVID-19 positivity with an Area Under the Curve (AUC) of 0.74.
Conclusion
This study provides reliable COVID-19 symptom statistics based on the general population verified by NAATs.
Related articles
Related articles are currently not available for this article.