Demographic science aids in understanding the spread and fatality rates of COVID-19

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America - Tập 117 Số 18 - Trang 9696-9698 - 2020
Jennifer B. Dowd1, Liliana Andriano1, David M. Brazel1, Valentina Rotondi1, Per Block1,2, Xuejie Ding1, Yan Liu1, Melinda Mills1
1Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3UQ, United Kingdom
2Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

Tóm tắt

Governments around the world must rapidly mobilize and make difficult policy decisions to mitigate the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Because deaths have been concentrated at older ages, we highlight the important role of demography, particularly, how the age structure of a population may help explain differences in fatality rates across countries and how transmission unfolds. We examine the role of age structure in deaths thus far in Italy and South Korea and illustrate how the pandemic could unfold in populations with similar population sizes but different age structures, showing a dramatically higher burden of mortality in countries with older versus younger populations. This powerful interaction of demography and current age-specific mortality for COVID-19 suggests that social distancing and other policies to slow transmission should consider the age composition of local and national contexts as well as intergenerational interactions. We also call for countries to provide case and fatality data disaggregated by age and sex to improve real-time targeted forecasting of hospitalization and critical care needs.

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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Tập 117 Số 18

9696-9698

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