One in 100 older Americans dies of Covid-19 as risk grows for the elderly

NEW YORK • As the coronavirus pandemic approaches the end of a second year, the United States stands on the cusp of surpassing 800,000 deaths from the virus, and no group has suffered more than older Americans.

All along, older people have been known to be more vulnerable, but the scale of loss is only now coming into full view.

Seventy-five per cent of people who have died of the virus in the US - or about 600,000 of the nearly 800,000 who have perished so far - were 65 or older. One in 100 older Americans has died of the virus. For people younger than 65, that ratio is closer to one in 1,400.

The heightened risk for older people has dominated life for many, partly as friends and family try to protect them.

"You get kind of forgotten,'' said Ms Pat Hayashi, 65, from San Francisco. "In the pandemic, the isolation and the loneliness got worse. We lost our freedom and we lost our services."

Since vaccines first became available a year ago, older Americans have been vaccinated at a much higher rate than younger age groups, and yet the brutal toll on them has persisted. The share of younger people among all virus deaths in the US increased this year, but in the past two months, the portion of older people has risen once again, according to data from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than 1,200 people in the US are dying of Covid-19 each day, most of them 65 or older. In both sharp and subtle ways, the pandemic has amplified an existing divide between older and younger Americans.

In interviews across the country, older Americans say they have continued to endure the isolation and fear associated with the pandemic long after tens of millions of younger and middle-aged people have gone back to work and school and largely resumed normal lives.

Older people are still falling seriously ill in great numbers, particularly if they are unvaccinated, and hospitals in the Midwest, New England and the Southwest have been strained with an influx of patients this month.

Worried about risks, and the ongoing warnings from officials about the dangers for older people, many are still curtailing travel and visits with family, and dining out less.

At the same time, the push by many companies to have employees return to workplaces is creating new tension for adults who are older - but still working - and considered at higher risk if they are to get the virus, some experts said.

Dr Louise Aronson, a geriatrician at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of Elderhood, said: "There are all these ways - subtle, overt, direct, indirect - that we are not taking the needs of older people in this pandemic into account."

The pandemic is no longer in the early, dark days of spring last year, when the mysterious virus was sweeping through nursing homes and assisted-living facilities and killing people in staggeringly high numbers, particularly those with pre-existing health issues.

After the first known coronavirus death in the US in February last year, the virus' death toll in the country reached 100,000 people in only three months.

The pace of deaths slowed throughout summer last year, then quickened throughout autumn and winter, and then slowed again this spring and summer.

Throughout the summer, most people dying of the virus were concentrated in the South.

But the most recent 100,000 deaths - beginning in early October - have spread out across the nation, in a broad belt across the middle of the country from Pennsylvania to Texas, the Mountain West and Michigan. These most recent 100,000 deaths, too, have all occurred in less than 11 weeks, a sign that the pace of deaths is moving more quickly again - faster than last winter's record surge.

NYTIMES