Diabetes as a factor associated with hospital deaths due to COVID-19 in Brazil, 2020

Objective: To analyze the association between diabetes mellitus and hospital deaths due to Covid-19 in Brazil, from February to August 2020. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study on hospitalized flu-like syndrome cases, with a positive test result for COVID-19, reported on the Influenza Epidemiological Surveillance Information System. Poisson regression with robust variance was used to estimate the magnitude of the association between diabetes and deaths. Results: Data from 397,600 hospitalized cases were analyzed, of which 32.0% (n = 127,231) died. The prevalence of death among people with diabetes was 40.8% (PR = 1.41; 95%CI 1.39; 1.42). After adjustments for the variables sociodemographic and comorbidities, it could be seen that those with diabetes (95%CI 1.14; 1.16) were 1.15 time more likely to die. Conclusion: 3 out of every 20 deaths due to COVID-19 occurred among individuals with diabetes mellitus, highlighting this population susceptibility and the need to control this chronic disease.