Study shows middle-aged people COVID-19 mortality risk

(AFP)

Middle-aged people, and not just the elderly, have a dramatically higher risk of dying or developing serious illness from COVID-19, new research from Britain showed Tuesday.

The findings came during a new comprehensive analysis of virus cases in China .

Researchers from Britain analysed quite 3,600 confirmed COVID-19 cases also as data from many passengers repatriated from the outbreak city of Wuhan.

They found that age was a key determining think about serious infections, with nearly one in five over-80s requiring hospitalisation, compared to around 1 percent among people under 30.

Taking under consideration estimates of the amount of cases which will not are clinically confirmed -- that's , mild or asymptomatic infections -- the info showed the hospitalisation rate of patients in their fifties was 8.2 percent.

The study, published within the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, estimated that the deathrate from confirmed COVID-19 cases in China was 1.38 percent.

If unconfirmed cases were taken under consideration , the death rate dropped to 0.66 percent.

The authors of the research said that while this was significantly less than previous estimates, COVID-19 remains several times deadlier than previous pandemic viruses, like H1N1.

"Our estimates are often applied to any country to tell decisions round the best containment policies for COVID-19," said Azra Ghani, a study co-author from Imperial College London.

"There could be outlying cases that get tons of media attention, but our analysis very clearly shows that at aged 50 and over, hospitalisation is far more likely than in those under 50, and a greater proportion of cases are likely to be fatal."

Billions of individuals are confined to their homes round the world as governments desperately attempt to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.

As of 1900 GMT Monday the virus had killed 36,374 people out of 757,940 cases globally.

That would mean 4.8 percent of all confirmed COVID-19 infections have proven deadly.

But experts stress that without widespread testing it's impossible to understand what percentage people may became infected and recovered.

This means truth deathrate is probably going much lower, in line with The Lancet study and former research from China.

The Lancet study showed that 18.4 percent of patients in their 80s were hospitalised in China.

This compared to 4.3 percent for 40 to 49-year-olds and roughly 1 percent for people in their 20s.

- 'Wrong path' -

According to their modelling, the authors estimate that 50-80 percent of the worldwide population could contract COVID-19 -- but that came with several caveats, as modelling can't account for behavioural changes like hand washing and social distancing.

Devi Sridhar, professor and chair of worldwide Public Health, at the University of Edinburgh's school of medicine , said that the idea that the majority people would become infected was leading governments, including in Britain, to abandon measures that would help slow the pandemic.

She tweeted on Tuesday that the models "resulted within the UK abandoning on containment too early & assuming everyone will catch on .

"Planning & preparing for unprecedented testing & using big data/apps for tracing were began the table. In my view, we went down the incorrect path," she said.

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