A member of the medical staff takes care of a patient in a hospital of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Monday.
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June 16, 2020 8: 50am
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350 million people in the world at high risk in the face of the COVID-19
Agence France-Presse
PARIS – about 350 million people in the world are likely to be severely affected by the disease COVID-19 and would require hospitalization in the event of contamination, according to a british study published Tuesday.
It is known that the new coronavirus affects very unequally the human function of multiple factors, related to the state of health, age, sex, and other.
The SARS-CoV-2, thus leaving the vast majority of free young people in good health and key to the contrary often hit the elderly with chronic diseases such as diabetes.
Based on what we know about the risk factors, british researchers sought to establish for 188 country risk differentiated the populations according to age, sex and state of health.
The results, published in the british medical journal The Lancet Global Health, shows that 1.7 billion people, or 22% of the world’s population, have at least one risk factor that makes them more likely to have a severe form of COVID-19.
Among these, 349 million people are particularly at risk of developing a severe form of the disease and would need to be hospitalized in the event of contamination.
“At a time when the country come out of the confinement (…) we hope that our estimates will provide a useful starting point” for governments who will “seek the means of protecting the more vulnerable to a virus that continues to circulate,” says the lead author of the study, Andrew Clark of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).
The researcher cites the fact advisor to those who are most at risk of adopting the gestures of social distancing adapted to or make a priority for future vaccination campaigns.
The proportion of people at risk is lower in areas where the population is younger. This is the case of Africa, where 16% of the population presents a risk factor to respond to the new coronavirus, 283 million out of a total population of 1.3 billion. In Europe, this share is 31%, or 231 million out of a population of 747 million.
“But a higher proportion of severe cases could be fatal in Africa,” especially because of the weakness of the health infrastructure, highlighted by Andrew Clark.
In addition to the african countries with the highest proportions of cases of hiv / aids such as Lesotho are more at risk vis-à-vis the pandemic.
At the same time islands like Mauritius or Fiji are at an increased risk due to a high proportion of the population suffering from diabetes, one of the aggravating factors for this viral illness, according to the study.
