Middle aged also facing greater risk from deadly Covid-19 pandemic — study

While elderly people face the greatest risk from the coronavirus, patients in their 50s may be also highly affected, according to a newly released study. It comes as global cases of Covid-19 cracked the 800,000 mark.

The research conducted by the specialists from Britain is a comprehensive investigation into deaths and hospitalizations reported to national and provincial health commissions in China.

Among others, scientists estimated "the time between onset of symptoms and outcome (death or discharge from hospital)" using the individual-case data.

Funded by the UK Medical Research Council, and published in the Lancet, the probe said that over 8% of people that were in their 50s needed hospital treatment.

That said, it also showed that patients over 80 remain the highest risk category with some 18% needing hospital treatment after contracting the disease.

At the other end of the spectrum 10-19-year-olds were the least at risk category with only 0.04% being hospitalized.

Co-author of the study, Professor Azra Ghani said that the estimates can be basically applied “to any country” for decisions as to how tackle Covid-19.

“There might be outlying cases that get a lot of media attention, but our analysis very clearly shows that at aged 50 and over, hospitalization is much more likely than in those under 50, and a greater proportion of cases are likely to be fatal.”

The study’s findings are based on an analysis of 70,117 laboratory-confirmed and clinically-diagnosed cases in mainland China (as of February, 8) as well as 689 positive cases of people evacuated from Wuhan, the outbreak epicenter, on repatriation flights (as of February, 25) .

The latest available figures from the WHO showed that the virus had killed 33,673 people out of 719,700 cases worldwide.

However, according to the Johns Hopkins University, the numbers are even more grim as it counts over 800,000 people affected by the deadly Covid-19.

This puts the mortality rate of all confirmed coronavirus cases at around 4%, but experts stressed that due to the absence of widespread testing, it is impossible to know exactly how many people may have been infected and recovered.

Meanwhile, cases of younger generation increasingly affected by the coronavirus are keep popping up. Belgium has reported Tuesday that a 12-year old girl died from the deadly disease, while Moscow authorities sounded the alarm over the ratio of serious Covid-19 cases among younger people as well. They reported that 40 percent of the patients undergoing artificial lung ventilation are under the age of 40.

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