What age is at risk if there is no underlying medical condition?

Brendan Burgess

Brendan Burgess

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I was surprised that a healthy young man like myself, aged only 62 1/2 , is deemed to be more at risk of serious illness.

www2.hse.ie

People at higher risk from COVID-19

Advice for people at higher risk from COVID-19 (coronavirus), including older people and people with health conditions.
www2.hse.ie www2.hse.ie

There are some groups of people who may be more at risk of serious illness if they catch coronavirus. But we do not think these groups have a higher risk of catching coronavirus. This is similar to other infections such as flu.

It is likely you are more at risk of serious illness if you catch coronavirus and you are one of the following:

  • 60 years of age and over.
  • Have a long-term medical condition – for example, heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, cancer or high blood pressure.
 
Update:

This is the most useful graph I have found and it seems to include those with pre-existing issues.

www.bbc.com

Coronavirus: Largest study suggests elderly and sick are most at risk

The deadliness of the virus advances progressively with the age of the patient, research suggests.
www.bbc.com

4351
 
Last edited:
An interesting New Scientist article

www.newscientist.com

Coronavirus: Risk of death rises with age, diabetes and heart disease

People who have the new coronavirus are more likely to die if they are older or show signs of sepsis or blood clotting problems, suggests a study of patients in two Wuhan hospitals
www.newscientist.com www.newscientist.com

Death was more likely in people who already had diabetes or coronary heart disease. Older people were more likely to die, as were those showing signs of sepsis or blood clotting problems. Overall, more than half of those hospitalised with the virus developed sepsis.

“Poorer outcomes in older people may be due, in part, to the age-related weakening of the immune system and increased inflammation that could promote viral replication and more prolonged responses to inflammation, causing lasting damage to the heart, brain and other organs,” said study co-author Zhibo Liu at Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan.
 
Breakdown of China's figures here by age and by co-morbidity - remember these are for those who are infected, it does not show your overall risk of getting infected and dying:

Co-morbidities also raise the risk of dying from Covid-19. China CDC’s analysis of 44,672 patients found that the fatality rate in patients who reported no other health conditions was 0.9%. It was 10.5% for those with cardiovascular disease, 7.3% for those with diabetes, 6.3% for people with chronic respiratory diseases such as COPD, 6.0% for people with hypertension, and 5.6% for those with cancer.
www.statnews.com

Who is getting sick, and how sick? A breakdown of coronavirus risk by demographic factors

The new coronavirus is not an equal-opportunity killer. Here's what research has shown about who might be most at risk.
www.statnews.com www.statnews.com
 
Hi Odyssey

That is close to what I am looking for.

The death toll skews old even more strongly. Overall, China CDC found, 2.3% of confirmed cases died. But the fatality rate was 14.8% in people 80 or older, likely reflecting the presence of other diseases, a weaker immune system, or simply worse overall health. By contrast, the fatality rate was 1.3% in 50-somethings, 0.4% in 40-somethings, and 0.2% in people 10 to 39.


80+ 15% mortality
70's
60's
50's 1.3%
40's 0.4%
Aged 10 - 39: 0.2%

But these include underlying conditions which are more common as you get older.

I would like to know the fatality rate for people in their 60s without an underlying condition.

Brendan
 
From the Centre for Disease Control

“This seems to be a disease that affects adults and older adults. Starting at age 60, there is an increasing risk of disease.” Messonnier continued to emphasize that the risk of serious illness — and death — increases with individuals older than the age of 80. Serious underlying health conditions are likely to have bad outcomes as well, such as heart or lung disease, or diabetes.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
I would like to know the fatality rate for people in their 60s without an underlying condition.
Click to expand...

That would need a well-specified multivariate regression with a big sample size.

I doubt that there is enough data of reliable quality yet to run this. Also, mortality rate is itself unreliable itself given:
  1. Lag between infection and death
  2. Treatment received may vary
  3. Testing rates that vary from place to place
 
I can't find a definitive answer.
The baseline risk is 0.9% for no other health conditions.
The risk for those aged 60-69 both with and without conditions is 3.6%.

Your risk therefore is somewhere between 0.9% - 3.6%, likely on the lower end of that range.

I read a second hand account from a doctor in Italy that priority for severe patients was being assigned to those under 65 without underlying medical conditions.
 
NoRegretsCoyote said:
That would need a well-specified multivariate regression with a big sample size.

I doubt that there is enough data of reliable quality yet to run this. Also, mortality rate is itself unreliable itself given:
  1. Lag between infection and death
  2. Treatment received may vary
  3. Testing rates that vary from place to place
Click to expand...
Yep, we'll have to wait until more people die of it to get enough data for meaningful analysis.
 
One has to make decisions based on the best available information.

This might not be perfect, but it's highly indicative.

4354
 
Risk of dying if infected with Covid-19:

60-69 years of age 3.6%
70-79 years of age 8.0%

Source: worldometers.info

Sorry, I don’t know how to post the link.

In line with your chart Brendan.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
One has to make decisions based on the best available information.

This might not be perfect, but it's highly indicative.

View attachment 4354
Click to expand...

Bear in mind baseline in China includes appalling urban air quality and a very high male smoking rate. These leave your lungs in poor quality before you get the virus.

Neither of those risk factors apply to a non-smoker living in Ireland.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
One has to make decisions based on the best available information.

This might not be perfect, but it's highly indicative.

View attachment 4354
Click to expand...

This includes people with comorbidities. Your thread title refers to "no underlying medical condition".

Up to yesterday the death rates in countries with more than 100 cases was zero in Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Singapore, Malaysia, Austria and Bahrain.

The death rate is not constant and is multifactorial, as alluded to above by Noregretscoyote.
 
What is the chance of getting infected?

The population of Hubei province is approx 60m and there are 80,000+ cases so can you now say the chance of being infected is 0.13%

If infected the chance of dying is as shown in the graph
 
I thought I'd heard the death rate in Korea was much lower, but from a higher infection rate because they're testing more people so detecting more people with mild/no symptoms. Swings and roundabouts I guess...
 
I was talking to a friend of mine who is the same age as myself.

He said that as the numbers infected now are so low, each one gets individual care.

But if and when there are 100,000 or 1m people in Ireland infected, it won't be possible to isolate them all and the death rate will probably rise.

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
I was talking to a friend of mine who is the same age as myself.

He said that as the numbers infected now are so low, each one gets individual care.

But if and when there are 100,000 or 1m people in Ireland infected, it won't be possible to isolate them all and the death rate will probably rise.

Brendan
Click to expand...

this is the worry - it wouldn't take much to overwhelm the health system; most of the measures seem to be aimed at slowing down the rate of infection.
 
There are many reputable websites dealing with the coronavirus.

I find this one Our World in Data from Oxford University informative and readable.

It explains what we can and cannot infer from data and situation reports.

Regarding death rates it states:

Measuring and interpreting the case fatality rate

It is important to understand the measurement challenges to understand what the case fatality rate can and cannot tell us about a disease outbreak.

There is no single case fatality rate for a disease – it is context-specific, changing with time and location

Unfortunately, it is common to report the CFR as a single value. But the CFR is not a biological constant. The CFR is not a value which is tied to the given disease, but is instead reflective of the severity of the disease in a particular context, at a particular time, in a particular population.

The probability that someone dies from a disease is not only dependent on the disease itself, but also the social and individual response to it: the level and timing of treatment they receive, and the ability of the given individual to recover from it.

This means that the CFR can decrease or increase over time, and that it can vary by location and by the characteristics of the infected population (age, sex, pre-existing conditions).
 
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