Age could be driving variable SARS-CoV-2 epidemic trajectories worldwide

Houssein H. Ayoub; Hiam Chemaitelly; Shaheen Seedat; Ghina R. Mumtaz; Monia Makhoul; Laith J Abu-Raddad

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04. 13.20059253 doi: medRxiv preprint large number of diagnosed cases in the city of New York, although additional fine-grained analyses are needed to delineate within-country heterogeneities in transmission dynamics. Our study explores the potential effect of age on the epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2, but other factors that remain poorly understood, may also contribute to driving different epidemic trajectories. Transmission of the virus may be affected by seasonality, environmental and genetic factors, differences in social network structure and cultural norms (such as shaking hands, kissing, and other person-to-person contacts), and underlying co-morbidities which also impact disease severity and mortality. These factors may have contributed to a slowly growing epidemic in Japan, despite its demographic structure, as opposed to fast growing epidemics in the European Region and the USA.