Lessons learnt from the first wave of COVID-19 in Damascus, Syria: a multicentre retrospective cohort study

OBJECTIVES: The decade-long Syrian war led to fragile health infrastructures lacking in personal and physical resources. The public health of the Syrian population was, therefore, vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic, which devastated even well-resourced healthcare systems. Nevertheless, the officially reported incidence and fatality rates were significantly lower than the forecasted numbers. DESIGN: A retrospective cohort study. SETTING: The four main responding hospitals in Damascus, which received most of the cases during the first pandemic wave in Syria (i.e., June–August 2020). PARTICIPANTS: One thousand one hundred eighty-four patients who were managed as inpatient COVID-19 cases. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: The records of hospitalised patients were screened for clinical history, vital signs, diagnosis modality, major interventions and status at discharge. RESULTS: The diagnostic and therapeutic preparedness for COVID-19 was significantly heterogeneous among the different centres and depleted rapidly after the arrival of the first wave. Only 32% of the patients were diagnosed based on positive reverse transcription-PCR tests. Five hundred twenty-six patients had an indication for intensive care unit admission, but only 82% of them received it. Two hundred fifty-seven patients needed mechanical ventilation, but ventilators were not available to 14% of them, all of whom died. Overall mortality during hospitalisation reached 46% and no significant difference was found in fatality between those who received and did not receive these care options. CONCLUSIONS: The Syrian healthcare system expressed minor resilience in facing the COVID-19 pandemic, as its assets vanished swiftly with a limited number of cases. This forced physicians to reserve resources (e.g., ventilators) for the most severe cases, which led to poor outcomes of in-hospital management and limited the admission capacity for milder cases. The overwhelmed system additionally suffered from constrained coordination, suboptimal allocation of the accessible resources and a severe inability to informatively report on the catastrophic pandemic course in Syria.