SARS-CoV-2 infection prevalence in the population of south-eastern Poland

Abstract

COVID-19 outbreak began in Wuhan, China, and has spread to other continents, including Europe, placing pressure on healthcare systems. Poland is one of the European countries with the highest number of SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19-related deaths. The aim of this study was to analyze the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in the population of south-eastern Poland. The correlation between viral infection and demographic data (gender, age, place of residence) and cancer was also investigated. A total of 44,801 samples were tested, of which 4862 cases were diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infections. A total of 14,970 samples were tested in cancer patients. The RT-PCR method was used to detect viral nucleic acid. In this study, significantly, the highest rate of virus detection was among people living in Lublin and the lowest among people living in a small town (p < 0.0001). Moreover, there was no significant relationship between sex and the frequency of virus detection. The highest number of SARS-CoV-2 infections was observed in the age groups 10–19, 20–29, 30–39, and 90+ (p = 0.0001). In cancer patients, the percentage of positive cases was significantly lower than in the rest (p = 0.0001).