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The researchers collected data on six million patients, including age, height-to-weight ratio, ethnicity, and pre-existing conditions known to increase the risk of serious outcomes after infection.
The five percent of people in Britain who were predicted by a new tool to be at increased risk from Covid-19 accounted for three-quarters of deaths during the first wave of the pandemic, researchers reported Wednesday.
As countries around the world face a second wave of disease, the risk assessment method, which also predicts the chances of hospitalization, could help identify the small percentage of the population that most need protection from the virus, reported in BMJ, a medical journal.
“The tool provides detailed information about people’s risk of serious illness from Covid-19 and is designed for use by clinicians with patients to achieve a shared understanding of risk,” the authors said in a statement.
To develop the new app, called QCOVID, researchers from across Britain collected data from six million patients, including age, height-to-weight ratio, ethnicity and pre-existing conditions, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, which are known to increase the risk of serious results after infection.
They then tested the approach on 2.2 million patients, most of whom did not have Covid-19, to see how well it predicted hospitalization and deaths for two periods, from late January to late April, and from 1 May to June 30.
More than three-quarters of those who died from the virus were in the top five percent of those expected to be most at risk.
While the tool effectively described those facing the worst odds, it did not identify which factors caused fatal outcomes, the researchers cautioned.
A ‘punching tool’
It also identified the relative risk to other members of society, but not the absolute risk of serious illness or death, which may change based on infection rates and precautionary measures, such as social distancing, wearing masks, and laundering. hands.
Experts who were not involved in the research said it had real potential.
“This supports the concept of targeted protection,” said Mark Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, describing the study as “a very surprising result.”
“If ways could be found to protect this five percent, such as regular testing of your closest contacts, it could make a substantial difference to the public health burden of Covid-19.”
But the model is only as good as the monitoring policies in place, warned David Strain, a senior clinical professor at the University of Exeter.
“Without a clear implementation plan, this tool still doesn’t serve a purpose,” he told the Science Media Center in London.
Strain also noted that the conditions in which the virus spreads continue to evolve.
“These data are derived from hospitalizations and deaths during the first wave,” he noted.
“Behavior, and therefore the risk of transmission, has changed significantly during this time, some for the better (such as the widespread acceptance of masks) and others for the worse.”
The model, for example, does not enter information about self-isolation, whether someone is working in a high-risk job, or is in a neighborhood with a high infection rate.
Aware of this problem, the authors said they designed the tool so that it can be updated as new data arrives.
Since January, there have been around 750,000 Covid-19 cases in Britain and almost 44,000 deaths.
Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 40 million people and killed more than 1.1 million.
