Tag: Covid-19

Protecting older people from COVID-19: should the United Kingdom start at age 60?

National and global spread of COVID-19 is accelerating. To reduce COVID-19-related hospitalisations, intensive care unit admissions and deaths, we recommend that those aged between 60 and 69 years are particularly stringent when implementing public health measures such as social distancing and personal hygiene. In the absence of government guidance, people in this group can make their own informed decisions on how to minimise their risks of COVID-19 infection. This can include using precautionary measures to reduce the risk of infection in a similar manner to that recommended by the UK government for people aged 70 years and over.

Read the article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0141076820921107

Case fatality in Covid-19 (Coronavirus) infection

We have seen varying estimates of the case fatality rate from Covid-19 (Coronavirus) infection. The case fatality rate is the percentage (or proportion) of patients with a disease who die. We should be cautious about accepting the estimates that have been published in medical journals as valid because many people will have undiagnosed infections. This is particularly likely in children, who often have mild symptoms (or no symptoms) when they contract a viral infection. Hence, the reported case fatality rates we have seen published in medical journals will overestimate the true death rate. As testing for Covd-19 infection becomes more widespread, we will get better estimates of the true infection rate in the population from the virus, and hence better estimates of the complication rate and death rate from the illness. In England, the new testing programme in people with respiratory tract infections announced by Public Health England will provide some of ths information.