Individuals admitted to hospital for COVID-19 might have persisting symptoms (so-called long COVID) and delayed complications after discharge. However, little is known regarding the risk for those not admitted to hospital. We therefore examined prescription drug and health-care use after SARS-CoV-2 infection not requiring hospital admission.
This was a population-based cohort study using the Danish prescription, patient, and health insurance registries. All individuals with a positive or negative RT-PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 in Denmark between Feb 27 and May 31, 2020, were eligible for inclusion. Outcomes of interest were delayed acute complications, chronic disease, hospital visits due to persisting symptoms, and prescription drug use. We used data from non-hospitalised SARS-CoV-2-positive and matched SARS-CoV-2-negative individuals from 2 weeks to 6 months after a SARS-CoV-2 test to obtain propensity score-weighted risk differences (RDs) and risk ratios (RRs) for initiation of 14 drug groups and 27 hospital diagnoses indicative of potential post-acute effects. We also calculated prior event rate ratio-adjusted rate ratios of overall health-care use. This study is registered in the EU Electronic Register of Post-Authorisation Studies (EUPAS37658).
