Risk of death by age and gender from CoVID-19 in Peru, March-May, 2020

Peru implemented strict social distancing measures during the early phase of the epidemic and is now experiencing one of the largest CoVID-19 epidemics in Latin America. Estimates of disease severity are an essential indicator to inform policy decisions about the intensity and duration of interventions needed to mitigate the outbreak. Here we derive delay-adjusted case fatality rates (aCFR) of CoVID-19 in a middle-income country in South America. We used government-reported time series of CoVID-19 cases and deaths stratified by age group and gender. Our estimates as of May 25, 2020, of the aCFR for men and women are 10.8% (95%CrI: 10.5-11.1%) and 6.5% (95%CrI: 6.2-6.8%), respectively, and an overall aCFR of 9.1% (95%CrI: 8.9-9.3%). Our results show that senior individuals are the most severely affected by CoVID-19, particularly men, with aCFR of almost 60% for those aged 80- years. We found that men have a significantly higher cumulative morbidity ratio than women across most age groups (proportion test, p-value< 0.001), with the exception of those aged 0-9 years. The COVID-19 epidemic is imposing a large mortality burden in Peru. Senior individuals, especially those who are older than 70 years of age, are being disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.