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9: Who is at risk?


At Risk Summary

I have put the 'New Zealand At Risk' summary at the top. For details, see below.
  1. Over 70
  2. Aged care facilities
  3. On medications
  4. Poor diet
  5. Diabetic (diagnosed or undiagnosed)
  6. Obese
  7. Smokers
In NZ, those who are pregnant have been listed as 'more at risk' but in the UK, where they have more experience with Covid-19, healthy pregnant women risk factors have now been validated with statistics. Reviewing  4,050,000 women, Pregnant women are not at a higher risk.

Details from NZ Government

Medical statistics have shown that there are three different groups of people when it comes to hospitalisation and mortality:

  1. High Risk
  2. Other People at Risk
  3. No Particular Risk

Ref: https://covid19.govt.nz/health-and-wellbeing/about-covid-19/people-at-higher-risk-of-severe-illness-from-covid-19/

High Risk

People with underlying medical conditions including:

  1. serious respiratory disease, including chronic lung disease and severe asthma
  2. serious heart conditions
  3. immuno-compromised conditions
  4. severe obesity — a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or higher
  5. hypertension that is not well controlled
  6. diabetes that is not well controlled
  7. chronic kidney disease
  8. liver disease.

Many conditions and treatments can weaken a person's immune system, including: 

  1. having chemotherapy or radiotherapy
  2. bone marrow or organ transplantation
  3. some blood cancers
  4. immune deficiencies including HIV infection
  5. immunity weakening medications such as high-dose corticosteroids and disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs.

Other People At Risk

  1. Those over 70
  2. Residents of aged care facilities
  3. Ethnic minorities
    1. International research has shown COVID-19 has a larger impact on ethnic minorities.
    2. Māori, Pacific and some other ethnic minorities in New Zealand are at risk of poor outcomes from COVID-19, especially where there is:
      1. a higher rate of chronic medical conditions
      2. crowded housing
      3. difficulty accessing health care.
      4. Smoking
  4. People with a history of smoking are more likely to have severe symptoms of COVID-19 and be admitted to intensive care.
  5. People who are pregnant

No Particular Risk

Ministry of Health state that most people recover. I assume this is irrespective of the vaccine.



Below are any additional resources I reviewed.

PLOS Research Data

This Collection of articles highlights all content published across the PLOS journals relating to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019-21. PLOS is committed to disseminating research as quickly as possible, particularly in public health emergencies. All articles published in any PLOS journal are Open Access free of charge to all readers. 

https://collections.plos.org/collection/covid-19/

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