Following the publication of a new study in The Lancet Global Health journal, examining the number of people with underlying health conditions that place them at risk of COVID-19;

Katie Wrenn, Epidemiologist at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers her view on the current challenges facing the nine major markets (9MM*):

“Being able to quantify the proportion of a population with chronic underlying disease helps nations to protect these at-risk groups and depressurize health systems by planning for the likely number of people who may require hospitalization if they contract COVID-19.

“GlobalData epidemiologists have analyzed the proportion of men and women of all ages across the 9MM who have underlying health conditions including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, cancer, diabetes, severe obesity and some selected rare diseases and have estimated that 340 million people, some 15% of the 9MM population, fall into this category.

“The US and the UK show the largest proportion of their population with underlying health conditions linked to severe outcomes of COVID-19 across the 9MM. These countries also rank in the top three countries most affected by death due to COVID-19 worldwide.

“It is essential that countries that have not yet reached their peak of transmission, such as those in South Asia, Latin America and Africa understand the importance of protecting the population most at risk as a vital public health response to combating this virus.”

*9MM = US, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, Japan, China, and South Korea