About 1 in 5 people worldwide at risk of a ‘severe’ COVID-19 infection, study finds
EDITOR’S NOTE: A new study reports that 104 million people in Canada and the U.S. are at risk of a severe COVID-19 infection. A previous version of this story misinterpreted the figure.
Scientists know that people with underlying health conditions are at higher risk of suffering severe consequences from COVID-19, but until now, it wasn’t clear just how many people fall into that at-risk group.
A new study says about one in five people worldwide could have an increased risk of a severe case of the disease if they get infected because of their underlying health conditions, such as chronic kidney disease, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, according to the study published Monday in The Lancet Global Health.
The authors say it “is beyond the scope of this analysis” to determine if these at-risk individuals have already been infected with the virus, but they say their research could provide insight into who might need to be better “shielded” or vaccinated early on as the pandemic continues to unfold.
Other important factors linked to severe cases of COVID-19 such as socioeconomic status, obesity and ethnicity were left out, meaning the numbers of people at increased risk might be higher than estimated in the study.
“This begins to move us past the one-size-fits-all approach,” Nina Schwalbe, a public health researcher at Columbia University and the author of a commentary accompanying the study, told the New York Times.
“The more precision we can get at who’s at risk of hospitalization, the better we can work with those people and tailor our response appropriately,” Schwalbe said.
The international team of researchers studied data from 188 countries using information from the United Nations, the World Health Organization and British and American public health agencies.
They also looked at the prevalence of certain health conditions, which were divided into 11 categories including cancer, sickle cell disorders and HIV/AIDS.
In Northern America, which includes the United States and Canada, about 104 million people have at least one underlying condition that puts them at “increased risk” of developing severe COVID-19 symptoms if they got infected, the study said.
Globally, about 1.7 billion people, or about 22% of the world’s population, are in the same boat.
There are more than 8.1 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the world, including 2.1 million in the United States, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker. There have been more than 441,500 coronavirus deaths worldwide and almost 117,000 in the U.S., as of Tuesday night.
The risks of severe cases skyrocketed for older individuals, researchers found. The study found that at-risk individuals younger than 20 years old have a less than 5% chance of developing serious symptoms, while those 70 years of age and older have more than a 66% chance of increased risk.
The researchers also analyzed how many people would be considered “high risk,” meaning they would require hospitalization if infected.
The team estimated that 349 million people in the world, about 4% of the global population — including healthy, older adults — would require hospital admission, the study revealed.
Men are also twice as likely to be considered high risk than women.
Europe was the region with the most residents — 31% of its population — at risk of severe coronavirus infection, likely because countries there have large older populations.
On the contrary, Africa had the lowest proportion of at-risk individuals, with just 16% of its population to have at least one underlying health condition that would put them at increased risk, the study said.
Generally, “the share of the population at increased risk was highest in countries with older populations, African countries with high HIV/AIDS prevalence, and small island nations with high diabetes prevalence,” the study said.
This story was originally published June 16, 2020 at 6:36 PM with the headline "About 1 in 5 people worldwide at risk of a ‘severe’ COVID-19 infection, study finds."
