Distinctive trajectories of COVID-19 epidemic by age and gender: a retrospective modeling of the epidemic in South Korea

Abstract

Objectives: Elderly people had suffered disproportional burden of COVID-19. We hypothesized that males and females in different age groups might have different epidemic trajectories. Methods: Using publicly available data from South Korea, daily new COVID-19 cases were fitted with generalized additive models, assuming Poisson and negative binomial distributions. Epidemic dynamics by age and gender groups were explored with interactions between smoothed time terms and age and gender. Results: A negative binomial distribution fitted the daily case counts best. Interaction between the dynamic patterns of daily new cases and age groups was statistically significant (p<0.001), but not with gender group. People aged 20-39 years led the epidemic processes in the society with two peaks: one major peak around March 1 and a smaller peak around April 7, 2020. The epidemic process among people aged 60 or above was trailing behind that of younger people with smaller magnitude. After March 15, there was a consistent decline of daily new cases among elderly people, despite large fluctuations of case counts among young adults. Conclusions: Although young people drove the COVID-19 epidemic in the whole society with multiple rebounds, elderly people could still be protected from virus infection after the peak of epidemic.