Mortality and prognosis of older patients during COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

An ongoing outbreak of pneumonia caused by the severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) started in December 2009 in Wuhan, China, and was gradually spread around the world. This is the third coronavirus infection in two decades, after the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). It was officially named Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) by the World Health Organization (WHO), in February 2020. Since then, the virus has become widespread, turning into a pandemic, in March 2020. Currently, the number of people diagnosed with COVID-19 worldwide has crossed the five million mark, causing more than 300,000 deaths. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.