The online calculator works by taking age, gender and underlying health conditions into account.
Published: Wed 13 May 2020, 3:00 PM
Updated: Wed 13 May 2020, 11:55 PM
Experts from University College London have developed the first calculator that helps Britons better understand their personal risk of dying from Covid-19.
The online calculator works by taking age, gender and underlying health conditions into account and assessing their effect on coronavirus mortality under different scenarios.
The calculator, which is still in development stage, will give doctors, health experts and the public the information about personalised risk from Covid-19, lead researcher Dr Amitava Banerjee said. Dr Banerjee said, "It is very much an early prototype, and the plan is to continue to simplify it so it can be used by the wider public. Our calculator provides one-year mortality risks for common conditions by age and gender."
Dr Banerjee added, "In the current emergency there is an urgent need to develop better understanding of who is at risk based on reliable health data." He further said that they used data modelling on a number of different scenarios following which findings showed the mortality risk for these vulnerable groups increases significantly, and could lead to thousands of avoidable deaths.
While following the pandemic, researchers warn the risk of death among people with health conditions, such as heart disease or diabetes, is five times higher than in healthy Brits. According to the researchers, there are 8.4 million people in the UK who need to avoid going outdoors especially once the lockdown is lifted as it is the only way to keep the death toll in the UK below 73,000 in the next year, reported The Sun.