Are Seniors at a Greater Risk for Coronavirus Complications?

University of California, Berkeley Professor Lee Riley believes people between ages 60 and 80 who contract the COVID-19 coronavirus are particularly vulnerable to complications and death, reports the San Francisco Chronicle . "Immune systems to fight infections wane with increasing age," he said. "Also, underlying medial problems, for example diabetes and COPD chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, are more common in this age group, which predispose them to respiratory infections." UC San Francisco Professor Charles Chiu agreed with Riley and pointed to a recent study in the Chinese Journal of Epidemiology on 44,000 confirmed cases in China. The research indicated that case fatality rates rose sharply with age from 0.2 percent to those under 40 to 14.8 percent to those older than 80. The mortality rate in the examined cohort was 2.3 percent, and men had a slightly greater chance of dying than women.