Scientists from University College London, UCL Hospitals NHS Trust, the University of Cambridge and Health Data Research U.K. have developed an online tool to help calculate and understand the risks of COVID-19.
Using over 3.8 million health records, researchers developed the tool to estimate the excess risk of mortality which may be associated with COVID-19.
The aims and initial learnings are hoped to support the implementation and development of policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. One response being explored is a proportionate response, where the public apply a common sense approach, mitigating the risks, similar to everyday life.
The researchers forecast that in the first year of the pandemic, between 37,000 – 73,000 more people in the UK could die than would normally on average. Researchers say the results depend on how lockdown restrictions are relaxed.
As part of this study, the authors developed a publicly accessible online ‘risk calculator’*, where a user can input the ‘R’ rate, age, sex and underlying health conditions and see how that can affect mortality rates in different scenarios of the COVID-19 emergency.
Pre-COVID-19 the one year mortality risk in adults with no underlying health conditions was 0.6%, compared to 3.5% in those with one underlying condition and 7.5% in those with two underlying conditions. The researchers modelled the additional effect of the pandemic on top of these background risks, which allows the calculator’s user to explore changes in the infection rate in the population and the relative impact of the COVID-19 emergency.
Lead author, Dr Amitava Banerjee, UCL Institute of Health Informatics said “Our calculator provides one year mortality risks for common conditions by age and sex. Before the pandemic neither doctors, nor patients have been used to seeing such information, but in the current emergency there is an urgent need to develop better understanding of who is at risk based on reliable health data. What we offer is a prototype, a beta version that we and others can develop further.”
“For example, we show how a 66-year-old man with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has a 6% risk of dying over the next year and there are 25 000 “patients like me” (i.e. men of the same age with the same condition) in England. The calculator estimates 164 excess COVID-related deaths on top of the expected 1639 deaths over a year in patients in a similar situation.”
As the government sentiment around COVID-19 begins to change, the question now being asked is what exactly are the risks of COVID-19 and researchers are exploring a proportionate response. This would be an option where the public apply a common sense approach – if you have symptoms, self-isolate. If you are in the at-risk group, stay away from public gatherings.
This approach is already applied on a daily basis within the household and outside of it, for example when driving a car, do we deliberately tailgate the car in front? Do we slow down when coming up to a zebra crossing? Do we emerge from a junction before looking both ways?It is about mitigating risk and acceptable risk, allowing people to choose the best ‘worst’ option.
Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, a statistician and an expert in risk from Cambridge University and government adviser, says COVID-19 has ‘become a game of risk management’.
The website application can be accessed here: Covid-19 Mortality Risk Indicator.
