Frequency of receiving antiviral medications in patients who died following COVID-19 disease

Abstract

Background: Various antiviral medications have been used during the COVID-19 pandemic, however, there is no promising result on the effectiveness of many of these medications, their side effects, and their association with death in patients. This study aimed to investigate the frequency of receiving antiviral medications in patients who died due to COVID-19 disease.
Methods: In this cross-sectional study, the demographical data and clinical characteristics of 1477 deceased patients with COVID-19 who were referred to Razi Hospital, Rasht, Iran, from 2018 to 2019, were collected from the hospital archive. The data was analyzed using SPSS version 16 software, and the significance level was considered <0.05.
Results: Due to our results the mean age of deceased patients was 64.8 years old. A total number of 764 patients were males. About 664 patients received Remdesivir, 388 patients received Interferon-beta-1a (IFN-β-1a), 186 patients received Oseltamivir, 169 patients received Lopinavir/Ritonavir, and 475 patients did not take any antiviral Medications., 609 people (41.2%) received one, 381 people (25.8%) received two, and 12 people (8%) received three antiviral medications. The frequency of Remdesivir was significantly higher in patients with younger age, with underlying disease, lower O2 Saturation, hospitalization in ICU, and also patients with medical insurance (P<0.05).
Conclusion: The results of the present study showed that in one-third of the cases, no antiviral medications were taken and the most frequent antiviral medication among patients was Remdesivir.