Testing for Correlation Between Age and Recovery Speed from COVID-19 Infection in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa

Abstract

The major aim of this research study was to test for correlation between age and recovery speed from COVID-19 infection among case-patients in Mpumalanga province. A sample of 5723 case-patients in the province was used. Using the date at which the result confirming positivity for each case was received and the date at which discharge occurred, the suitable date function in Excel was used to calculate the speed of recovery, measured by number of days. The speed of recovery from infection was calculated as the number of days from first positive to first negative SARSCoV-2 PCR test result. Data was processed in Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21 for windows prior to conducting statistical data analysis. The correlation between age and recovery speed was tested using a Pearson’s correlation method.  Frequencies show that the largest proportions of cases were 32% (n = 1831) aged 30-39 years, and 21% (n = 1208) aged 40-49 years. Descriptive statistics show that the mean (standard deviation) age and average recovery speed were 38.3 ± 14.6 years and 16.9 ± 7.4 days. The calculated Pearson correlation coefficient (ρ = 0.008; p > 0.05) show that there is a positive but statistically insignificant correlation between recovery speed and age, confirming that recovery speed does not correlate strongly with age of case-patients.

Keywords: Age, Recovery Speed, COVID-19 Infection

DOI: 10.7176/JHMN/80-12

Publication date:September 30^th 2020