Thread by @MaxCRoser

A new study by the @cmmid_lshtm – which is not published yet – asks: How many people worldwide are at increased risk of severe COVID-19 disease?

[link to the study cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19…]

👇 A short thread on the main findings of this study.

Severe cases, according to this study, are those with pneumonia or dyspnea (‘shortness of breath’) they include those that “would require hospitalisation if available, and are at risk of increased mortality”.

They break their main question into two questions:

1st: What are the risk factors for severe cases of COVID-19?
2nd: Based on the global prevalence of these risk factors, how many are at increased risk of severe COVID-19 disease?

Table 1 is their answer to the first question.

To answer the 2nd question the rely on the Global Burden of Disease study (GBD) to estimate the number of people with these conditions.

[Since the GBD does not estimate multimorbidity (the same individual suffering from more than one condition), they have to estimate this.]

Their answer to the headline question is that between between 15 and 28% of the world population have at least one condition that could increase their risk of severe COVID-19 disease.

That is between 1 and 2.4 billion people.

This does not mean that this number of people will die, and it does not mean that this number will suffer from severe symptoms of COVID-19.

But it suggests that to prevent a very large number of deaths a large fraction of the world population requires protection.

As one would expect there are differences in the share of the population with one or more condition that puts them at risk.

But nowhere is the share of people at risk very low.

The chart shows the study results country by country.

This is only a first study and as I emphasized not published yet.

But I think this is exactly the kind of study that we need to respond appropriately to the pandemic and plan how to protect those who are most vulnerable.

/end/