Association of social, demographic, ecological factors, and underlying diseases with COVID-19 mortality rate: A cross-sectional study

Background: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between demographic, social, and ecological factors, as well as underlying diseases (diabetes, kidney, liver, and hypertension) with the COVID-19 mortality rate in the city of Kerman. Methods: The present cross-sectional study was carried out on 200 COVID-19 survivors and 200 hospitalized deceased patients after infection to COVID-19 from March 2019 to March 2020. Logistic regression and Poisson regression were used to assess the relationship between demographic, social factors, underlying diseases, ecological parameters, and mortality rate. Results: The COVID-19 mortality rate in the affected population (n = 6966 people) was 19.5%. The affected people were over 60 years old, male, Iranian, and married in more than half of the cases. A significant difference was observed between the two groups in terms of age (P < 0.001). However, there was no significant difference between hospitalized deceased patients and survivors in terms of social variables. Diabetes (OR = 1.79; 1.1 to 3.17), hypertension (OR = 1.6; 1.02 to 2.52), and liver disease (OR = 5.13; 1.05 to 24.99) had a significant effect on the mortality rate due to COVID-19 infection. The risk of COVID-19 death has significantly reached 0.96; in other words, decreased by 4% (P = 0.03), for a one -degree increase in the average rainfall during the studied period. Conclusion: Finally, the prevalence of underlying diseases in the hospitalized deceased patients was more than that in the survivors. The results of the present study are expected to have preventive interventions and identify risk factors for mortality in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 and similar diseases.