ArticleBMC medical research methodology2021
Estimating age-specific COVID-19 fatality risk and time to death by comparing population diagnosis and death patterns: Australian data.
Article in BMC medical research methodology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 63 citations in OpenAlex.
- Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) based COVID-19 health impact assessment: a systematic review.BMC public health · 2023Pooled it
- Angiotensin receptor blockers for the treatment of covid-19: pragmatic, adaptive, multicentre, phase 3, randomised controlled trial.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2022Trial
- Dynamics of infection, vaccination and excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic among older individuals-a nationwide analysis.European journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness Against Mortality in the Omicron Period: Evidence from Linked Mortality and Vaccination Records.Vaccines · 2025Article
- Survival of hospitalised COVID-19 patients in Hawassa, Ethiopia: a cohort study.BMC infectious diseases · 2024Article
- Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 incidence and deaths: cross-national natural experiment in 32 European countries.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Bulk and Single-Cell RNA Sequencing Elucidate the Etiology of Severe COVID-19.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Public interest trends for COVID-19 and pandemic trajectory: A time-series analysis of US state-level data.PLOS digital health · 2024Article
- Association of prior treatment with nitrogen-containing bisphosphonates on outcomes of COVID-19 positive patients.Osteoporosis international : a journal established as result of cooperation between the European Foundation for Osteoporosis and the National Osteoporosis Foundation of the USA · 2024Article
- COVID-19 and End of Life in a Quaternary Australian Hospital: Referral for Palliative Care Consultation.Palliative medicine reports · 2024Article
- Waves of inequality: income differences in intensive care due to Covid-19 in Sweden.European journal of public health · 2023Article
- Repeated antibiotic exposure and risk of hospitalisation and death following COVID-19 infection (OpenSAFELY): a matched case-control study.EClinicalMedicine · 2023Article
- Public interest trends for Covid-19 and alignment with the disease trajectory: A time-series analysis of national-level data.PLOS digital health · 2023Article
- Nonpharmaceutical Interventions in Georgia: Public Health Implications.Southern medical journal · 2023Article
- Understanding COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness against Death Using a Novel Measure: COVID Excess Mortality Percentage.Vaccines · 2023Article
- Understanding the efficacy of wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 in two diverse communities.PloS one · 2023Article
- Estimation and prediction of the multiply exponentially decaying daily case fatality rate of COVID-19.The Journal of supercomputing · 2023Article
- Article
- Education and COVID-19 excess mortality.Economics and human biology · 2022Article
- Impact of Vaccination and Control Measures on the Fatality of COVID-19: An Ecological Study.Journal of epidemiology and global health · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMortality is a key component of the natural history of COVID-19 infection. Surveillance data on COVID-19 deaths and case diagnoses are widely available in the public domain, but they are not used to model time to death because they typically do not link diagnosis and death at an individual level. This paper demonstrates that by comparing the unlinked patterns of new diagnoses and deaths over age and time, age-specific mortality and time to death may be estimated using a statistical method called deconvolution.
methodsAge-specific data were analysed on 816 deaths among 6235 cases over age 50 years in Victoria, Australia, from the period January through December 2020. Deconvolution was applied assuming logistic dependence of case fatality risk (CFR) on age and a gamma time to death distribution. Non-parametric deconvolution analyses stratified into separate age groups were used to assess the model assumptions.
resultsIt was found that age-specific CFR rose from 2.9% at age 65 years (95% CI:2.2 - 3.5) to 40.0% at age 95 years (CI: 36.6 - 43.6). The estimated mean time between diagnosis and death was 18.1 days (CI: 16.9 - 19.3) and showed no evidence of varying by age (heterogeneity P = 0.97). The estimated 90% percentile of time to death was 33.3 days (CI: 30.4 - 36.3; heterogeneity P = 0.85). The final age-specific model provided a good fit to the observed age-stratified mortality patterns.
conclusionsDeconvolution was demonstrated to be a powerful analysis method that could be applied to extensive data sources worldwide. Such analyses can inform transmission dynamics models and CFR assessment in emerging outbreaks. Based on these Australian data it is concluded that death from COVID-19 occurs within three weeks of diagnosis on average but takes five weeks in 10% of fatal cases. Fatality risk is negligible in the young but rises above 40% in the elderly, while time to death does not seem to vary by age.
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