INSEE and DREES looked at the socio-economic characteristics of people who experienced a severe form of Covid-19 between March 2020 and November 2021 during the first four waves of the pandemic in France.
Hospitalization, resuscitation, long Covid… Millions of French men and women have experienced a severe form of Covid-19 and are still sometimes suffering the consequences in their everyday life. Who were these patients, what was their social background or way of life? The DRESS (Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics Department) and INSEE have screened the data with models. 20% of people hospitalized died during their hospital stay.
elderly patients
Age was a major risk factor for hospitalization for Covid-19: 72% of hospitalized patients were aged 60 or over, despite representing only 27% of the French population. Being male was an additional risk factor: 52% of hospitalized patients over 60 were male. A population even more exposed if it had a risk factor: obesity, arterial hypertension, diabetes, coronary heart disease, chronic pulmonary pathologies.
More modest patients
The poorest populations are over-represented in hospitalizations. They have a standard of living 6% lower on average than the average standard of living of the population as a whole.
Patients living in social housing
Twenty-one percent of patients hospitalized or admitted to an intensive care unit live in social housing, compared to 15% of the general population. Another characteristic: they live in housing that is more populated than the average, making contact more frequent and compliance with barrier gestures more difficult. “The risk of hospitalization increases as the surface area available per inhabitant decreases and it is higher for occupants of social housing, regardless of the surface area available”, explains the study.
Patients often born abroad
DRESS and INSEE found that hospitalized individuals were more frequently born abroad, particularly in the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa: 26% of those over 35 compared to 17% of the population over 35, d ‘after the statistics. International studies have already identified ethnicity as a risk factor.
Modest patients less vaccinated
When vaccination began in France on December 27, 2020, the elderly were given priority. Studies have shown that the use of vaccination increases with the standard of living. This finding “could explain why the severe forms of the fourth wave have more affected the most modest, less frequently vaccinated”, explains the study.