Global COVID-19 trends: gender and age impacts

Abstract

COVID -19 pandemic is creating an uncertainty about the demographic trends of morbidity and mortality rates across countries worldwide. Hence, this study is aimed to characterize the gender and age distribution of morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 across populations. This cross-sectional study uses aggregate data on COVID-19 cases and deaths by gender and age. Considering gender-based morbidity, men diagnosed with COVID-19 substantially outnumber infected women with statistically significant findings (*p=<0.05,  RR>2) in Asian, American, and African countries, whereas women diagnosed higher morbidity rate in European countries. However, gender-based fatality showed higher among men in most of the analyzed countries of all those continents except Australia where female fatality was higher. This study revealed 50 years old were mostly associated with the infection and death in all continents except Australia, showing more morbidity above 20 years of age, whereas, fatality rate was more in the above 80 years group. The study concludes that, across countries, COVID-19 morbidity and fatality rate is age specific rather than gender specific. Infection rates showed rising steeply with age; nevertheless, children do not stand on equal footing when COVID-19 crisis is transforming their day-to-day lives.