Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

August 21, 2020

Age Could Be Driving Variable SARS-CoV-2 Epidemic Trajectories Worldwide

Category:

Topic:

Keywords (Tags): ,

• A model incorporating 159 countries suggests that differences in the population age distributions across regions may substantially affect COVID-19 pandemic trajectories, with countries with larger adult populations potentially experiencing more severe and rapid transmission of COVID-19 than countries with younger populations. In the African Region (median age: 18.9 years), the authors estimated a median R0 of 1.05 versus 2.05 in the European Region (median age: 41.7 years) and 1.65 in the American Region (median age: 30.7 years). In a “worst-case” scenario that did not include mitigation interventions, the median final cumulative infection incidence was 22.5 per 100 persons in the African Region (versus 69.0 in the European Region and 53.0 in the American Region) and the death rate was 0.5 per 100 persons (versus 3.9 in the European Region and 2.0 in the American Region).

Ayoub et al. (Aug 20, 2020). Age Could Be Driving Variable SARS-CoV-2 Epidemic Trajectories Worldwide. PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237959