Besides population age structure, health and other demographic factors can contribute to understanding the COVID-19 burden.
Nepomuceno, Marília R;
Acosta, Enrique;
Alburez-Gutierrez, Diego;
Aburto, José Manuel;
Gagnon, Alain;
Turra, Cássio M;
(2020)
Besides population age structure, health and other demographic factors can contribute to understanding the COVID-19 burden.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 117 (25).
pp. 13881-13883.
ISSN 0027-8424
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2008760117
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An insightful paper by Dowd et al. (1) highlights the
importance of demography for analyzing coronavirus
disease 2019 (COVID-19)–related mortality. The authors
underscore the role of population age structure and intergenerational contacts for understanding differences
in cross-country fatality and estimate the potential impact of the pandemic on different populations, acknowledging the need for additional information on the
prevalence of comorbidities. We aim to interpret the
proposed scenarios considering the widely different
prevalence of chronic conditions by age in three of the
countries discussed in the original paper. We argue that
the burden of chronic diseases has the potential to offset
the possible benefits of younger populations with different epidemiological characteristics.