Individual and Community-Level Risks for COVID-19 Mortality in the US

• Activity Number: 277 - ASA Student Paper Competition Winners
• Type: Topic-Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 11, 2021 : 1:30 PM to 3:20 PM
• Sponsor: Government Statistics Section
• Author(s): Neha Agarwala* and Prosenjit Kundu and Jin Jin and Nilanjan Chatterjee and Yuqi Zhang and Benjamin Harvey and Eliza Wallace
• Companies: University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University and 4PolicyMap, Inc.

Abstract

Reducing COVID-19 burden for populations will require equitable and effective risk-based allocation of vaccination. We develop a COVID-19 mortality risk calculator based on socio-demographic factors and pre-existing conditions for US population by integrating information from UK-based OpenSAFELY study with mortality rates by age and ethnicity across US states. We extend the tool to produce absolute risks in future times by combining information on pandemic dynamics at community level. We combine information on risk factor distribution from several national databases and apply the model to provide risk projections for general adult population across 477 US cities and Medicare population 65 years and older across 3,113 US counties. Validation analyses using 54,444 deaths from June 7 to October 1, 2020 show the model is well calibrated for US population. Projections show that the model can identify relatively small fractions of the population (e.g.4.3%) which might experience a disproportionately large number of deaths (e.g. 48.7%). Still, there is a wide variation in risk across communities. We provide a web-based risk calculator and interactive map for viewing community-level risks.