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Data shows risk of death due to COVID-19 increases with age

Breaking down the data to show how COVID-19 is impacting every age group.
Credit: FOCUS investigates

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Wednesday, Kentucky learned about the death of a nine-month-old child, Kentucky's youngest victim to the coronavirus.

Gov. Andy Beshear said the disease was not the main cause, but it was a contributing factor.

Our FOCUS team is breaking down the data by age to give this some context.

This graph is charting the total cases and deaths across age groups — the blue bars are total cases and the orange bars are deaths.

Credit: FOCUS investigates

You'll notice the risk of death is still increasing with age.

To give you a better idea, the highest death rate is for those 80 years old and older at about 25%. The next highest is among those 70-79 at 13%.

Death rates for other groups are non-existent, or in the single digits.

Please note, Experts agree the exact death rates will not be known until the pandemic is over but we wanted to give you the current rates from more context.

Credit: FOCUS investigates

Turning to the Hoosier state, a similar graph shows the risk of death increases with age.

Those 80 or older have about a 30% death rate, while those 70-79 have a current death rate of 17%. Those 80 years or older make up about 50% of the total deaths in Indiana.

Credit: FOCUS investigates

The Hoosier state has published more data that gives us an even deeper understanding of the impacts.

Let’s look at average how long the person with the disease needs to be hospitalized.

The youngest age group, those 19 or younger, have the shortest average hospital stay of about seven days. Those 50-59 have the longest hospital stays, averaging almost 21 days.

While all loss of life is sad, our elderly are facing still facing a serious risk of death. And although the economy is reopening and cases remain below our health care capacity, many continue to get seriously ill and need to be hospitalized for more than a week.

The data is a reminder that the crisis is not over, but we’ll keep tracking the data and giving you the context to understand it.

If you have a story you want us to investigate or a question about the data, send us an email at focus@whas11.com

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