Identifying High-Risk COVID Patients Through Early Symptoms and Other Risk Factors

As cases of the coronavirus continue to rise in the US and globally, there is increasing need to find more efficient ways to identify at-risk populations and find potential solutions to protect people from symptom onset. In a recent study, Nancy A Dreyer, chief scientific officer and senior vice president, Real World Solutions, IQVIA, identified factors that could imply COVID-19 positivity and help facilitate diagnosis and triage without testing, as well as better predict who is most at-risk of developing serious infections.

As an epidemiologist, Ms. Dreyer, has history working with infectious diseases—COVID-19 is her third pandemic. She began her work with H5N1 influenza A, commonly known as the avian flu, which was highly lethal with a case-fatality rate of close to 90%—with a median of 9 days from first symptom to death. “I helped create the world’s largest patient registry by reviewing hospital records from bird flu cases throughout southeast Asia,” she explained. “We discovered that a medication that was approved for seasonal influenza quadrupled the likelihood of surviving avian influenza, a very exciting finding. Later I worked H1N1 influenza by studying vaccine safety.”

Find out more about Ms. Dreyer’s recent work on COVID here.