Age Isn’t the Full Picture in Covid-19 Death Risks, Population Study Finds
Adding age to social inequalities + comorbidities doesn’t really improve predictive power for Covid-19 death.
This study, “Unequal impact of structural health determinants and comorbidity on COVID-19 severity and lethality in older Mexican adults: Considerations beyond chronological ageing,” is published on 29 June in Gerontology. The lead author is Omar Yaxmehen Bello-Chavolla, MD, PhD, and specialist in Applied Statistics at the National Institute of Geriatrics in Mexico City. As the title says, despite what is known, age is not all there is in explaining Covid-19 severity and death.
The Mexican Ministry of Health documented 101,238 Covid-19 cases, of which 28,804 (20.5%) affected those over 60 years old. As expected, the older age group had higher Covid-19 death rate at 29.49% compared to younger age group at 6.95%. The older people also had a higher prevalence of medical comorbidities.
Most studies did not analyze SLI, a measure of social disadvantage and structural inequality.
The studied risk factors for Covid-19 severity include age, sex, smoking, asthma, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, chronic…
