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Old age is considered a risk factor for severe COVID-19. Epidemiological studies from Wuhan and Iceland have also shown that susceptibility to COVID-19 varies with age.
Now, a group of scientists from the University of Hokkaido claim that age may not be related to susceptibility to COVID-19 after all. However, the claim that older people may be at risk of developing serious illness and dying from COVID-19 if they contract it remains true.
The new study is published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific reports.
The study
To conduct the study, the researchers modeled COVID-19 data from Japan, Italy, and Spain. The countries were chosen because their data was readily available.
They then studied the data to find the link between age, susceptibility (risk of getting the disease), or severity (risk of dying from the disease).
According to a press release from the University of Hokkaido, the death rates from COVID-19 (deaths per 100,000 infected people) in Japan, Italy and Spain, in May 2020, were 13.2, 382.3 and 507, 2 respectively. However, despite the enormous variation in the mortality rate, the three countries had a similar age distribution of mortality (percentage of deaths in each age group).
To better understand susceptibility to COVID-19, the researchers included factors such as interaction with other people and restrictions in the three countries.
The data showed that the robust age distribution of mortality in the three countries is not determined by susceptibility to infection, but does suggest a link between age, number of symptomatic infections, and mortality rate. In other words, age may not decide whether a person is at higher risk for COVID-19, but it may have some effect on which patient can develop a serious illness (if they do get it) and die from it.
Lack of data
The authors suggested that the age-dependent mortality that is evident in all three countries may simply be due to the greater number of symptomatic infections that occurred in older people. However, since we do not have data on the rate of COVID-19 diagnosis or age-dependent symptomatic cases, nothing can be said for sure.
Furthermore, to understand the mechanism behind the age-dependent death rate of COVID-19, precise data is needed for the age-dependent death rate. The data used in the study may not cover all deaths due to COVID-19.
The study authors also indicated a lack of case fatality rate in their data. This is because the total number of cases, which is needed to estimate the fatality rate, is not yet clear when it comes to COVID-19. Changes in testing rate, case definition, and selection bias make it difficult to even estimate the exact number of total COVID-19 cases.
The authors suggested that large-scale epidemiological studies and infection identification are needed to remedy this problem and find out exactly how many people were infected by the disease in the first place.
For more information, read our article on COVID-19.
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