Print
Category: Volume 15, Issue 2, 2021
Hits: 748

The SARS-CoV-2 epidemic has hit Africa hard, with Libya being among the worst-affected nations. However, there were few research studies about this pandemic and its effects in AL-Zawiyah city in particular and Libya in general. This research aimed to study and investigate the COVID-19 disease in AL-Zawiyah city from a variety of perspectives in order to identify and clarify potential risk factors, the most commonly used diagnostic technique, clinical features, various used therapeutic modalities for this disease, and the mortality rate. This research was a retrospective cohort study and it included 176 randomly chosen individuals who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 during the period from 1st December,2020 to 28th February, 2021 in AL-Zawiyah city. The current study found that the average age of the COVID-19 patients was 45.06 years (SD 17.7), and the most dominant age groups were 15-<45 years (44.3%) and 45-<60 years (36.4%), respectively, and 58.5% of patients were females. Moreover, 76.1% of COVID-19 patients had a positive history of close contact with a COVID-19 patient before they had SARS-CoV-2 infection. The most common clinical manifestations were headache (77.3%), fatigue (73.3%), muscle aches (71.0%), loss of taste or smell (71.0%), fever (67.6%), cough (50.6%), breathing difficulty (49.4%), loss of appetite (42.6%), sore throat (42.0%) and chest pain (36.9%). Only 86.4% of COVID-19 patients were treated by the combined therapy (the traditional Libyan medicine {TLM} and the conventional COVID-19 therapy). Out of 176 COVID-19 patients, 19 (10.8%) died from SARS-CoV-2 infection. We concluded that the individuals with age group fall in 15-<60 years, the female gender and the positive history of close contact with a COVID-19 case are considered the potential risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 infection in AL-Zawiyah city.Our participants’ clinical characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 infection were comparable to those reported in numerous studies, with notable differences in the most frequent and least common symptoms between ours and theirs, which might be due to differences in the environment and/or research design.TLM was used widely by our participants for treating this disease with combination by drugs. Although, the recovery percentage was high, the mortality was also very significant and it is six to seven folds higher than that reported by Libyan NCDC.

download pdf button 11