Introduction
functional disability, decompensation of chronic conditions, infection, deaths, disability
CORONAVIRUS, INFECTION
In December 2019, a new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 was discovered in Wuhan (China), and caused millions of deaths worldwide [During the pandemic, the number of hospital beds available was overwhelmed by the influx of patients with severe COVID-19, forcing to select the profile of patients eligible for hospitalization, i.e. those who would benefit from their hospital stay. An infection such as COVID-19 can lead to a succession of episodes of decompensation of chronic conditions in older patients. The International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps (ICHD) has shown that every organ impairment leads to disability, especially in older people [In France, the most commonly used scale for assessing functional disability is the AGGIR grid (‘Autonomie Gérontologique Groupe Iso-Ressources’). [We hypothesized that the initial functional disability may serve as a prognostic factor in older patients with COVID-19. Our objective was to determine whether the presence of an initial functional disability according to the AGGIR grid was associated with an increase 1-year mortality in geriatric patients with COVID-19 in the GERIA-COVID cohort (GERIAtric Patients Hospitalized for COVID-19) during the first wave of the pandemic in France.