Demographic science aids in understanding the spread and fatality rates of COVID-19

Jennifer Beam Dowd; Valentina Rotondi; Liliana Adriano; David M Brazel; Per Block; Xuejie Ding; Yan Liu; Melinda C Mills

An interesting example in this direction comes from the Canton Ticino, 7 the canton in Switzerland bordering to Lombardy. On March the 12 th , the Canton Ticino has adopted measures aimed at contrasting the diffusion of the virus which are explicitly aimed at protecting the elderly and atrisk populations. To this aim, the resolution 1262 8 "strongly discourages" people over 65 (and those categories at risk of incurring serious complications that can endanger their lives) to "look after children, participate in public or private events, use public transportation, except for medical and professional needs or for the purchase of basic necessities, and attend public exercise." Further research to test how population age structure, intergenerational contacts, and social distancing measures interact to best mitigate risk is needed. 6 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/science/coronavirus-curve-mitigation-infection.html 7 We thank Prof. Luca Crivelli for this suggestion. 8 https://www4.ti.ch/fileadmin/DSS/DSP/UMC/malattie_infettive/Coronavirus/1262.pdf . CC-BY 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.