The Ulutas Medical Journal · ISSN 2149-0430 (print), 2149-388X (online) · https://www.ulutasmedicaljournal.com/?mno=106876
Letter to the Editor · Open access
Protecting Doctors Aged Greater than 50 Years from COVID-19
Also available in: العربية · Türkçe · 中文
Abstract
Glynn raised the concern about the need for protecting workers aged 60-69 years from COVID-19. In addition to the general population, we think this issue is important within the healthcare system. However, we wonder whether this estimation can be applied in the healthcare system. To answer this question, we used the same model to estimate the distribution of death according to the doctor's age group. First, we found that 40% and 30% of deaths are in the 70+ and 60-69 year group. Second, after excluding the doctors aged more than 70 years, it estimated that 48% of deaths developed in the 60-69 years age group. Both of these findings were consistent with Glynn¡'s findings and suggest that doctors aged over 60 years should be protected. Moreover, we also noted that 31.4% of deaths were estimated to occur in the 50-59-year groups in the group aged less than 70 years. This ratio was higher in the analysis of the general population by Glynn, in which 25% of death developed in the group aged 50-59 years. Overall, it suggested that doctors aged greater than 50 years should need protection within the hospital in this COVID-19 pandemic. To avoid overload of the healthcare system, which was associated with the poor outcome of critical COVID-19 patients and prevent the death of aged physicians, appropriate allocation of physicians' works according to their specificity and age should be conducted to enhance the effectiveness of healthcare resource.
Keywords
Full text
Dear Editor, Health, in one recent study(1), Glynn raised the concern about the need of protecting worker aged 60-69 year from COVID-19. In addition to general population, we think this issue is important within healthcare system. However, we wonder whether this estimation can be applied in the healthcare system. To answer this question, we used the same model (2, 3), to estimate the distribution of death according to the doctors’ age group. First, we found that 40% and 30% of deaths are in the 70+ and 60- 69 year group. Second, after excluding the doctors aged more than 70 years, it estimated that 48% of deaths developed in the 60-69- year age group (Table-1). Both of these findings were consistent with Glynn’s findings and suggest that doctors aged over 60 years should be protected. Moreover, we also noted that 31.4% of deaths was estimated to occur in the 50-59-year groups in the group aged less than 70 years. This ratio was higher in the analysis of general population by Glynn, in which 25% of death developed in the group aged 50-59 years. Overall, it suggested that doctors aged greater than 50 years should need protection within the hospital in this COVID-19 pandemic. To avoid overload of healthcare system, which was associated the poor outcome of critical COVID-19 patients and prevent the death of aged physicians, appropriate allocation of physicians’ works according the specificity and age (<50 vs ≥50 years) should be conducted to enhance effectiveness of healthcare resource.
Declarations
- Author contributions (CRediT)
- All authors contributed equally to all 14 CRediT roles (Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing).
- Funding
-
Funding information was not reported in the published version of this article.
- Conflicts of interest
- The authors declare no competing interests.
- Ethics approval
- Ethics approval details were not reported in the published version of this article.
- Data availability
- Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.
References (3)
2 of 3 references are linked to their DOI.
- Glynn JR. Protecting workers aged 60-69 years from COVID-19. Lancet Infect Dis. 2020 Apr 16. pii: S1473-3099(20)30311-X. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30311-X DOI Crossref PubMed Google Scholar
- R Verity, LC Okell, I Dorigatti, et al. Estimates of the severity of coronavirus disease 2019: a model-based analysis. Lancet Infect Dis 2020 March 30 DOI Crossref PubMed Google Scholar
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/698278/registered-doctors -united-kingdom-uk-by-age/ accessed on April 28, 2020 PubMed Google Scholar
Respond to this article
Comments on a published article are welcome as a Letter to the Editor.
Get an e-mail when new articles in your fields are published
Questions to the authors
Questions are moderated: an editor approves each question, the authors answer, and an editor approves the answer before both appear here.
No answered questions yet.
Ask the authors a question
Discussion
Comments are moderated: they appear after the writer confirms the e-mail address and an editor approves them. Each comment carries a conflict-of-interest statement.
No comments yet.
Write a comment
Read the full text
Open the PDF here
Loading the PDF…
If the PDF does not show here, use the download button above.
How to cite this article
Chao CM. Protecting Doctors Aged Greater than 50 Years from COVID-19. Ulutas Med J. 2020;6(2):101-102. doi:10.5455/umj.20200513022911
Chao, C. M. (2020). Protecting Doctors Aged Greater than 50 Years from COVID-19. The Ulutas Medical Journal, 6(2), 101–102. https://doi.org/10.5455/umj.20200513022911
Chao, C.M. (2020) 'Protecting Doctors Aged Greater than 50 Years from COVID-19', The Ulutas Medical Journal, 6(2), pp. 101–102. doi: 10.5455/umj.20200513022911.
@article{umj106876,
title = {Protecting Doctors Aged Greater than 50 Years from COVID-19},
author = {Chao, Chien-Ming},
journal = {The Ulutas Medical Journal},
year = {2020},
volume = {6},
number = {2},
pages = {101--102},
doi = {10.5455/umj.20200513022911},
url = {https://www.ulutasmedicaljournal.com/?mno=106876},
issn = {2149-388X}
}