COVID-19 mortality risk for older men and women
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
COVID-19 mortality risk for older men and women N. David Yanez1* , Noel S. Weiss2, Jacques-André Romand3 and Miriam M. Treggiari1
Abstract Background: Case-fatality from COVID-19 has been reported to be relatively high in patients age 65 years or older. We sought to determine the age-specific rates of COVID-19 mortality at the population level. Methods: We obtained information regarding the total number of COVID-19 reported deaths for six consecutive weeks beginning at the 50th recorded death, among 16 countries that reported a relatively high number of COVID19 cases as of April 12, 2020. We performed an ecological study to model COVID-19 mortality rates per week by age group (54 years or younger, 55–64 years, and 65 years or older) and sex using a Poisson mixed effects regression model. Results: Over the six-week period of data, there were 178,568 COVID-19 deaths from a total population of approximately 2.4 billion people. Age and sex were associated with COVID-19 mortality. Compared with individuals ages 54 years or younger, the incident rate ratio (IRR) was 8.1, indicating that the mortality rate of COVID-19 was 8.1 times higher (95%CI = 7.7, 8.5) among those 55 to 64 years, and more than 62 times higher (IRR = 62.1; 95%CI = 59.7, 64.7) among those ages 65 or older. Mortality rates from COVID-19 were 77% higher in men than in women (IRR = 1.77, 95%CI = 1.74, 1.79). Conclusions: In the 16 countries examined, persons age 65 years or older had strikingly higher COVID-19 mortality rates compared to younger individuals, and men had a higher risk of COVID-19 death than women. Keywords: Age, Severe acute respiratory syndrome-CoronaVirus-2, epidemiology, Pandemic, Population health
Background After the emergence of a novel coronavirus (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-CoronaVirus-2 [SARSCoV-2]) in China, a pandemic has spread worldwide [1]. Clinical manifestations of SARS-CoV-2 infection have been designated as COVID-19. The epidemic that originated in the Hubei province in China spread to over 60 countries, with western Europe and the US being particularly severely affected by COVID-19.
* Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Anesthesiology, 333 Cedar Street, TMP-3, New Haven, CT 06510, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Data from China and Italy suggest a case-fatality of 2.3% in patients with COVID-19, with more than 50% of the fatalities occurring in patients 50 years of age or older [2]. In the largest reported series from Northern Italy, case-fatality in patients 64 years or older was 36% compared with 15% in younger patients [3]. The mortality rate from COVID-19 in any age category is determined not only by the case-fatality among recognized incident cases, but by the age-specific incidence itself. Using age-specific mortality data, we sought to determine the relative risk of death across age categories in 16 countries that have had a high reported incidence of COVID-19 .
© The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is l
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