COVID-19 case fatality risk by age and gender in a high testing setting in Latin America: Chile, March-August 2020

Early severity estimates of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are critically needed to assess the potential impact of the ongoing pandemic in different demographic groups. Here we estimate the real-time delay-adjusted case fatality rate across nine age groups by gender in Chile, the country with the highest testing rate for COVID-19 in Latin America.

We used a publicly available real-time daily series of age-stratified COVID-19 cases and deaths reported by the Ministry of Health in Chile from the beginning of the epidemic in March through August 31, 2020. We used a robust likelihood function and a delay distribution to estimate real-time delay-adjusted case-fatality risk and estimate model parameters using a Monte Carlo Markov Chain in a Bayesian framework.

As of August 31, 2020, our estimates of the time-delay adjusted case fatality rate (CFR) for men and women are 4.16% [95% Credible Interval (CrI): 4.09-4.24%] and 3.26% (95% CrI: 3.19-3.34%), respectively, while the overall estimate is 3.72% (95% CrI: 3.67-3.78%). Seniors aged 80 years and over have an adjusted CFR of 56.82% (95% CrI: 55.25-58.34%) for men and 41.10% (95% CrI: 40.02-42.26%) for women. Results showed a peak in estimated CFR during the June peak of the epidemic. The peak possibly reflects insufficient laboratory capacity, as illustrated by high test positivity rates (33% positive 7-day average nationally in June), which may have resulted in lower reporting rates.

Severity estimates from COVID-19 in Chile suggest that male seniors, especially among those aged ≥ 70 years, are being disproportionately affected by the pandemic, a finding consistent with other regions. The ongoing pandemic is imposing a high death toll in South America, and Chile has one of the highest reported mortality rates globally thus far. These real-time estimates may help inform public health officials' decisions in the region and underscore the need to implement more effective measures to ameliorate fatality.