Deviation in the Age Structure of Mortality as an Indicator of COVID-19 Pandemic Severity

Abstract

Objectives. To test whether distortions in the age distribution of deaths can track pandemic activity. Methods. We compared weekly distributions of all-cause deaths by age during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States from March to December 2020 with corresponding prepandemic weekly baseline distributions derived from data for 2015 to 2019. We measured distortions via Kolmogorov–Smirnov (K-S) and χ2 goodness-of-fit statistics as well as deaths among individuals aged 65 years or older as a percentage of total deaths (PERC65+). We computed bivariate correlations between these measures and the number of recorded COVID-19 deaths for the corresponding weeks. Results. Elevated COVID-19-associated fatalities were accompanied by greater distortions in the age structure of mortality. Distortions in the age distribution of weekly US COVID-19 deaths in 2020 relative to earlier years were highly correlated with COVID fatalities (K-S: r = 0.71, P < .001; χ2: r = 0.90, P < .001; PERC65+: r = 0.85, P < .001). Conclusions. A population-representative sample of age-at-death data can serve as a useful means of pandemic activity surveillance when precise cause-of-death data are incomplete, inaccurate, or unavailable, as is often the case in low-resource environments. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(1):165–168. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306567 )