Anyone help me find some stats on demographics and ICU usage from COVID-19?

[andrewducker]

It's been clear for a while that the vast majority of the deaths are in the people aged 60 and above.

What I can't find is information on what percentage of people, by age, need the ICU.

Because it doesn't matter if the death rate of 30-year-olds is 0.01% - if that death rate assumes that 5% of them go to the ICU and then survive because of medical treatment. Because that means that overwhelming the health system massively multiplies the death rate.

Which seems to be what the models are assuming. But I can't actually find any stats on the percentages of people who need the ICU (by age) and thus would be in much greater danger.

Anyone point me towards something useful?

Comments

[dewline]

This might cover the US:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105420/covid-icu-admission-rates-us-by-age-group/

Details are, unfortunately, paywalled. Will keep trying at my end as the day goes on.

[malobukov]

Approximately 3 out of 4 people with COVID-19 that were put on the ventilator die anyway, so overwhelming the health system should not "massively multiply" the death rate.

[andrewducker]

At what age ranges?

[malobukov]

I only saw overall numbers, not broken down by age.

[redbird]

Now I'm wondering about another statistic: is the survival rate of 30-year-olds who need ventilators the same as for 60-year-olds who need them?

Overwhelming the health system doesn't just mean running out of ventilators. It means running out of doctors and nurses to provide other kinds of care, and hospital beds for patients. S

Overwhelming the health care system includes running out of masks, gowns, etc. to protect hospital staff from getting sick--a nurse or doctor who is quarantined is a nurse or doctor who isn't there to take care of patients. It means EMTs not even trying to save patients who aren't breathing when the hospital gets there: the survival rate of people who needed CPR, defibrillators, and so on isn't great, but it's non-zero. Those deaths aren't counted as due to COVID-19, but the people are still dead. (Not trying to save those patients is where New York City was a week or so ago.)

Massachusetts is "in the surge," which among other things means that they're doing only the most urgent of surgery. How long can they postpone necessary surgery before those delays increase the death rate?

I might not have asked to be taken to the ER a dozen years ago, for what I found out afterwards had been a life-threatening gall bladder problem, if the system had been overloaded the way it is now. (I'd spent quite a while thinking "it's not a big deal, the pain comes and goes" before I realized that yes, it might be a big deal.)

[malobukov]

I have not seen this data, but expect to see a difference in survival rate of 30-year-olds and 60-year-olds (both with COVID-19 and requiring ventilators).

I also expect to see eventual increase in deaths from other causes, e.g., due to people not getting treatment for illnesses other than COVID-19. But right now, at least in hotspots like NY, more people die from COVID-19 than from all other causes combined, so in the first approximation we can just concentrate on COVID-19. Especially since some of the increase in deaths will be offset by reduction of traffic fatalities and violent crime due to stay-at-home orders.

[snippy]

I don't think you are right about reduction of traffic fatalities and violent crime; those people aren't following the laws already, they're not going to stay home under orders and avoid selling/buying illegal guns, drugs, trafficking people, speeding (they're doing a lot of that), etc.

[malobukov]

Traffic fatalities are a function of miles driven, so I'm pretty sure they will go down.

Violent crime is not as clear. Domestic violence will go up, but robberies will go down (most happen in transitional spaces). Gang violence will also be down (fewer people on the street, as in cold weather). And surely there will be no school shootings. Overall I think we'll be better off, but won't know for sure for a while.

Unless some kind of civil unrest and mass looting begins, in which case all bets are off.

[snippy]

Time will tell, of course, but where I am there has been an increase in dangerous driving of specific kinds that has led to more arrests; there have been more car thefts and carjacking incidents; and an increase in the number of nights per week with bullets flying in various neighborhoods. (Mileage relation to traffic fatalities remaining stable assumes drivers stay home in the same proportions that they drove; what if only bad drivers/law breakers are now driving?)

I think under the stress of job loss, change in routines, children home from school, some people who previously were not overstressed or had enough outlets now express more violence.

[agoodwinsmith]

Yes. One of the reasons New York knows it is not capturing all the COVID19 deaths is that deaths from other causes have spiked:
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/13/deaths-from-cardiac-arrests-have-surged-in-new-york-city

[dewline]

In which country/countries?

[malobukov]

US and China. Several studies with different results, but all paint a pretty grim picture.

[palmer1984]

Also, covid hospital treatment isn't just ventilation. Most hospital patients don't require a ventilator, but they do require e.g. oxygen. If hospitals run out of space to treat people, these people won't get oxygen.

[malobukov]

New York hospitals have been sending patients like that home with oxygen bottle.

[ninetydegrees]

This maybe? (Not really what you're looking for but maybe something)

https://www.uptodate.com/contents/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-epidemiology-virology-clinical-features-diagnosis-and-prevention#H162437075

https://www.uptodate.com/contents/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-epidemiology-virology-clinical-features-diagnosis-and-prevention/abstract/77

"As of March 16, a total of 4,226 COVID-19 cases in the United States had been reported to CDC, with multiple cases reported among older adults living in long-term care facilities (4). Overall, 31% of cases, 45% of hospitalizations, 53% of ICU admissions, and 80% of deaths associated with COVID-19 were among adults aged≥65 years with the highest percentage of severe outcomes among persons aged≥85 years. In contrast, no ICU admissions or deaths were reported among persons aged≤19 years. Similar to reports from other countries, this finding suggests that the risk for serious disease and death from COVID-19 is higher in older age groups."

[ninetydegrees]

And this is from the US wiki article on the coronavirus pandemic in France:

"Health officials remained emphatic that severe cases are very rare in young people. In a weekly briefing, Director of Health, Jérôme Salomon, said that the 15 to 44-year age group represented only 8% of serious coronavirus cases admitted to hospital, and half of the cases exhibited pre-existing health conditions.[101] Up to 24 March, only 5 cases out of 507 certified deaths were in the 15–44 age group, and all had pre-existing health issues."

The way it works here is that you're not admitted to the hospital unless you have respiratory issues or other severe symptoms. If they are not acute and don't worsen you can be sent back home and have video consultations with a doctor.

[ninetydegrees]

Better stats actually, but just for my country, and in French: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pand%C3%A9mie_de_Covid-19_en_France#R%C3%A9partition_d'hospitalisations_par_classe_d'%C3%A2ge

Alternatively...

[dewline]

...is this site useful?

https://covid19.who.int/

[aldabra]

The Lancet, January 24th, Huang et al.: https://tinyurl.com/w5qfs4w

Figure 1 shows the ICU requirement of the first hospitalised cohort in Wuhan,
by age.

[danieldwilliam]

So, if I read the chart correctly, about 15% of the first wave of hospital admissions were people in the age bracket 25-49 who needed ICU care?

[jack]

When I was doing numbers before the UK locked down, I remember using something like, 1% death rate overall, 0.1% for otherwise healthy people, higher for vulnerable people, hospitalisation rate 5x death rate, ventilator rate 3x death rate. But that was based off of Twitter graphs of numbers from China post Wuhan. People in the comments to my post had more numbers, I hope we have more accurate numbers now. I certainly didn't have a breakdown by age at the time, I was just guessing Howe much the proportions would transfer.

[agoodwinsmith]

This is for British Columbia Canada, with some limited Canada-wide information.

http://www.bccdc.ca/health-info/diseases-conditions/covid-19/data

When last measured (2019), population of BC was/is 5.071 million. We've also got 944735 square kilometers of space. Most of the population is in the Lower Mainland, which is roughly from Hope to the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal. Comparatively tiny land amount.

I'm in the Interior Health region.

[reverancepavane]

It can be difficult to say without a good baseline which most people don't have at the moment. For example admission data in Australia was distorted by quite a large number of very ill-informed people having "coronavirus parties" and deliberately becoming infected. For the stated reason of "getting it over with" apparently, and probably fuelled by media reports of the negligible mortality rates among the young. Which resulted in a statistically significant surge in hospital admissions amongst the younger cohorts - since while they were indeed less likely to die of the disease (and of the treatment for the disease which is quite stressful in and of itself), it doesn't mean they were less likely to get seriously ill and require medical support (although being younger they were more likely to be able to deal with being put on a ventilator than an older patient).

[anna_wing]

http://archive.is/rUYmq - New York Times article that links to several current studies on patients in China, New York and France

Also for comparison purposes https://www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19

That's the Singapore Ministry of Health COVID-19 page

Case summary at the tip, including total number of tests performed country-wide, number of deaths, number of people in critical condition.

It seems clear that the underlying health and demographics of the general population play a role too. The younger people in European countries (including the UK for this purpose) and the US who end up seriously ill from COVID-19 seem to have been mostly those with existing health conditions, including being obese. I believe the French Health Minsiter remarked on this in a press conference quite recently, with specific reference to the extraordinarily high rate of obesity in the US. So that would probably make a difference to the population that ends up in an ICU.