PLoS One. 2024 May 2;19(5):e0301325. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0301325. eCollection 2024.
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: Recent literature has highlighted the overlapping contribution of demographic characteristics and spatial factors to urban-rural disparities in SARS-CoV-2 transmission and outcomes. Yet the interplay between individual characteristics, hospitalisation, and spatial factors for urban-rural disparities in COVID-19 mortality have received limited attention.
METHODS: To fill this gap, we use national surveillance data collected by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and we fit a generalized linear model to estimate the association between COVID-19 mortality and the individuals’ age, sex, hospitalisation status, population density, share of the population over the age of 60, and pandemic wave across urban, intermediate and rural territories.
FINDINGS: We find that in what type of territory individuals live (urban-intermediate-rural) accounts for a significant difference in their probability of dying given SARS-COV-2 infection. Hospitalisation has a large and positive effect on the probability of dying given SARS-CoV-2 infection, but with a gradient across urban, intermediate and rural territories. For those living in rural areas, the risk of dying is lower than in urban areas but only if hospitalisation was not needed; while for those who were hospitalised in rural areas the risk of dying was higher than in urban areas.
CONCLUSIONS: Together with individuals’ demographic characteristics (notably age), hospitalisation has the largest effect on urban-rural disparities in COVID-19 mortality net of other individual and regional characteristics, including population density and the share of the population over 60.
PMID:38696525 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0301325
