The world's population has been recently dealing with a new infectious disease, SARS-CoV-2 epidemic, which was first reported in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. The virus transmission was rapidly spread around the globe and the World Health Organization declared it as a public health emergency and it has been reported that SARS-CoV-2 is related to high morbidity and mortality rates.
The total number of infected patients has risen fastly and at the end of February 2020, the first case in Brazil was confirmed, suggesting that the SARS-CoV-2 is a pandemic situation.
The clinical aspect of SARS-CoV-2 ranges from pneumonia to critically ill cases, including clinical treatment, mechanical ventilation, and SARS.
The acute respiratory failure of critically ill patients with COVID-19 has different aspects, including hypoxemia of difficult treatment, associated in some cases with clotting disorders, changes in immunity and inflammatory phenomena that pose challenges for the management of these patients, whose mortality can be higher than expected.
The Public Health School in Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil, implemented an action plan that provides several actions against COVID-19, including a specialized hospital and crew to treat these patients. Knowing the characteristics of critically ill patients with COVID-19 and their clinical outcomes is extremely important to inform clinical decision-making and to guide the strategy to mitigate the epidemic, both within each hospital and ICU and in public health management.
