Predicting critical illness on initial diagnosis of COVID-19 based on easily obtained clinical variables: development and validation of the PRIORITY model.

Objectives: We aimed to develop and validate a prediction model, based on clinical history and examination findings on initial diagnosis of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), to identify patients at risk of critical outcomes.

Methods: We used data from the SEMI-COVID-19 Registry, a cohort of consecutive patients hospitalized for COVID-19 from 132 centres in Spain (23rd March to 21st May 2020). For the development cohort, tertiary referral hospitals were selected, while the validation cohort included smaller hospitals.