Age, diabetes and heart disease linked to risk of death

摘要

TWO small studies this week shed light on who may be most at risk of dying from covid-19, and how long it takes to develop symptoms. Early on in the outbreak, two hospitals in Wuhan, China, were designated to treat people with the coronavirus. Bin Cao at Capital Medical University in Beijing and his colleagues have assessed all patients who had been discharged from or died at the hospitals by 31 January. They found that the average age was 56, and 62 per cent were men. Around half of those treated had underlying medical conditions, most often diabetes and high blood pressure (The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/ S0140-6736(20)30566-3).