Researchers develop calculator to determine COVID-19 mortality risk; here's how it works

Researchers in the United States have developed a COVID-19 mortality risk calculator in order to help the authorities deploy preventive measures and administer vaccines based on differential risk for individuals and communities. The tool is aimed at helping the health authorities prioritise certain groups for COVID-19 vaccination by analysing the risk factor for individuals and communities. The COVID-19 mortality risk calculator tool has been developed by researchers, including an Indian-origin, from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. 

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Online risk calculator

The study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, said that the tool allows individuals, communities, and concerned authorities to determine the risk factor by analysing sociodemographic and pre-existing conditions for the population. The calculator is available online for interested individuals and health officials that allows users to determine the risk factor based on information such as age, sex, race, and gender and also on preexisting conditions within the same community. 

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"We tailored the tool to produce absolute risk estimates in future time frames by incorporating information on pandemic dynamics at the community level. We applied the model to data on risk factor distribution from a variety of sources to project risk for the general adult population across 477 US cities and for the Medicare population aged 65 years and older across 3,113 US counties, respectively," the study said. 

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The tool may come in handy for health officials in the United States as the country prepares for the deployment of a COVID-19 vaccine for the mass. The tool should help the authorities in identifying high-risk groups and prioritising them for the COVID-19 vaccine. The disease has already killed more than 3,00,000 people in the United States and has infected over 16 million, making it by far the worst affected country in the world. 

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