Higher age, but also frailty, was linked to an increased risk of death during the period of care. Frailty is a relatively new concept that is used as a tool to describe a patient's functional level before the individual suffered from an acute illness.
A frailty score higher than five on the nine-point Clinical Frailty Scale was found to be more associated with increased mortality in COVID-19 patients than the patient's age. A frailty score of six means that a patient needs help with all outside activities, keeping house and bathing.
"It is an interesting finding, that frailty appears to be a better measure than age in predicting COVID-19 survival," says Juulia Jylhävä, one of the other main authors and researchers in the area of frailty in the same department
