Study of 17 Million Identifies Crucial Risk Factors for Coronavirus Deaths

A study in Nature listed several factors that can raise a person's chances of dying from COVID-19, reports the New York Times . The investigators concentrated on de-identified data from Britain's National Health Service. Of 17.28 million adults tracked over three months, 10,926 died of COVID-19 or related complications. The researchers determined that adults older than 80 years were at least 20 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than those in their 50s, and hundreds of times more likely to die than those younger than 40. The University of Oxford's Ben Goldacre said the scale of this relationship was "jaw-dropping." Men who contracted the virus had a higher risk of death than women of the same age, and conditions such as obesity, diabetes, severe asthma, and compromised immunity also were associated with poor outcomes. Approximately 11 percent of subjects tracked by the analysis identified as nonwhite, and black and South Asian people were especially at higher risk of dying from COVID-19 than whites. That trend persisted even after statistically adjusting for factors including age, sex, and medical conditions.