External validation of the QCovid 2 and 3 risk prediction algorithms for risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation and mortality in adults : a national cohort study in Scotland

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Kerr, Steven and Millington, Tristan and Rudan, Igor and McCowan, Colin and Tibble, Holly and Jeffrey, Karen and Fagbamigbe, Adeniyi Francis and Simpson, Colin R and Robertson, Chris and Hippisley-Cox, Julia and Sheikh, Aziz (2023) External validation of the QCovid 2 and 3 risk prediction algorithms for risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation and mortality in adults : a national cohort study in Scotland. BMJ Open, 13 (12). e075958. ISSN 2044-6055 (https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2023-075958)

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Abstract

Objective The QCovid 2 and 3 algorithms are risk prediction tools developed during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic that can be used to predict the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation and mortality, taking vaccination status into account. In this study, we assess their performance in Scotland. Methods We used the Early Pandemic Evaluation and Enhanced Surveillance of COVID-19 national data platform consisting of individual-level data for the population of Scotland (5.4 million residents). Primary care data were linked to reverse-transcription PCR virology testing, hospitalisation and mortality data. We assessed the discrimination and calibration of the QCovid 2 and 3 algorithms in predicting COVID-19 hospitalisations and deaths between 8 December 2020 and 15 June 2021. Results Our validation dataset comprised 465 058 individuals, aged 19–100. We found the following performance metrics (95% CIs) for QCovid 2 and 3: Harrell’s C 0.84 (0.82 to 0.86) for hospitalisation, and 0.92 (0.90 to 0.94) for death, observed-expected ratio of 0.24 for hospitalisation and 0.26 for death (ie, both the number of hospitalisations and the number of deaths were overestimated), and a Brier score of 0.0009 (0.00084 to 0.00096) for hospitalisation and 0.00036 (0.00032 to 0.0004) for death. Conclusions We found good discrimination of the QCovid 2 and 3 algorithms in Scotland, although performance was worse in higher age groups. Both the number of hospitalisations and the number of deaths were overestimated.

ORCID iDs

Kerr, Steven, Millington, Tristan, Rudan, Igor, McCowan, Colin, Tibble, Holly, Jeffrey, Karen, Fagbamigbe, Adeniyi Francis, Simpson, Colin R, Robertson, Chris ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6848-5241, Hippisley-Cox, Julia and Sheikh, Aziz;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)