Doctors have new tool to predict people at highest Covid-19 risk – allowing them to better target protective measures
- Researchers in the UK say QCOVID tool could help governments shield people with the highest odds of a severe coronavirus infection
- In tests the 5 per cent of Britons it said were most at risk accounted for 75 per cent of Covid-19 deaths. However, it doesn’t identify people’s risk factors
A new tool developed by researchers in Britain predicts which people will be at highest risk from Covid-19. Tests earlier this year showed that the 5 per cent of Britons it identified as most as risk accounted for three-quarters of deaths from the coronavirus during the first wave of the pandemic in the UK, researchers reported.
As countries worldwide grapple with a second wave of the disease, the risk-assessment method – which also predicts the chances of hospital admission – could help identify the people in a population who are most in need of being shielded from the virus, they reported in the BMJ medical journal.
To develop the new application, called QCOVID, researchers from across Britain compiled data from six million patients, including age, height-weight ratio, ethnicity, and pre-existing conditions – such as high blood pressure and diabetes – known to increase the risk of serious outcomes after infection.
They then tested the approach on 2.2 million patients – most of whom did not have Covid-19 – to see how well it predicted hospital admissions and deaths during two periods, late January to the end of April, and May 1 to June 30.