Introduction the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a disease that originated from Wuhan in December 2019. It rapidly spread across the globe causing high mortality especially among the elderly. Africa though not spared has limited studies regarding its effects on its population. We therefore sought to describe the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of COVID-19 in Douala, Cameroon. Methods we conducted a single-centre, retrospective, and observational study by reviewing records of patients managed for COVID-19 between the 8 th March 2020 and 31 st , May 2020. Cases were confirmed by real-time reverse transcriptase - polymerase chain reaction and were analysed for epidemiological, demographic, clinical, and radiological features. Outcomes were either clinical improvement by Day-28 or in-hospital mortality. Results we analyzed 282 case files, 192 were males (M: F=2: 1). The mean age was 52 (+/- 15) years. Hypertension and diabetes accounted for 75% of the chronic medical conditions identified. Main presenting complaints were dyspnea, cough, asthenia, and fever (55-60%). Radiographic analysis showed a ground-glass appearance in 85% of cases. Chloroquine/Hydroxychloroquine was the most (91.8%) frequently used drug in management protocols, 35% needed oxygen supplementation while 6 patients were intubated. Severe pneumonia (11.3%) was the commonest complication. They were 91 admissions in the intensive care unit. The average length of hospital stay was 10 (+/- 5) days. The mortality rate was 32%. Conclusion our findings are concordant with universally reported data of COVID-19 hospitalised patients. These parameters are essential in designing effective prevention and control programs aimed at reducing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic particularly in countries with limited resources.

Background: In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus disease 2019 a pandemic, this was caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2. The overall mortality from this remains high, yet there are limited studies assessing the associated factors in Africa. Objective: To identify the factors associated with mortality in hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Douala, Cameroon. Method: We conducted a single-centre retrospective cross-sectional study by reviewing records of patients managed for COVID-19 between March and June 2020. Diagnosis was confirmed by real-time RT-PCR. Outcome of interest was mortality during hospitalization. We inputted and analyzed data using SPSS version 25.0, compared mortality between groups using the Chi's squared test and the Fisher's exact test where appropriately investigated for associations using the Logistic regression in a stepwise approach and alpha-value set at P = 0.05. Results: We analyzed 282 case files, 68% were males (M:F = 2:1) and a mean age of 52 (±15) years. We had an overall mortality of 31.5% (89/282 patients) and 54% (50/92 patients