Models for mortality require tailoring in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic – Authors’ reply
and agree that long-term mortality models, applicable to people with different underlying conditions, have an important ongoing role in the COVID-19 response, and that they require further development to include wider determinants of health.
A strength of our approach is that we estimated absolute risk in 5-year age bands; increasing age has now been established as the most important risk factor for severe or fatal COVID-19. For example, people aged 80 years or older have a 20 times increased risk compared with those aged 50–59 years.
We agree with Lasry and Horth that it is important to consider the health service, societal, psychological, and economic consequences of the emergency; each of which might affect all-cause mortality more than any association with COVID-19.
and cardiovascular diseases
in relation to COVID-19 excess mortality.
there is still little information on how long-term (≥1 year), all-cause mortality has been affected in people with each condition.OurRisk.CoV has received more than 1·3 million visits since its release on May 12, 2020 (660 000 unique users). Despite the calculator being only a prototype for researchers to explore data, we believe that its use, and user feedback, strongly supports the public need to understand risk, tailored to age, sex, and a much wider
range of underlying conditions. The real challenge is not only estimating risk in a more granular way, as we have attempted to do, but also in communicating the concept of risk to populations and individuals.
We declare no competing interests.
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Article Info
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Published: 26 September 2020
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© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
