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  • Publication | 2020

Socio-economic vulnerability and epidemic risk by age. Implications for the exit strategy from COVID-19

Migration and Demography
Intensity of contacts by age or respondent (vertical axis), place of contact (colors) and country. The contacts are summed for all ages of the contacted persons.
Intensity of contacts by age or respondent (vertical axis), place of contact (colors) and country. The contacts are summed for all ages of the contacted persons. (@EC 2020)

JRC120497

In designing an exit strategy from COVID-19, governments need to balance the risks posed by possible recrudescence of the epidemic when lifting containment measures, which is higher for vulnerable groups of populations, against the urgency to reopen established economic activities and reduce the social and psychological vulnerability of the population subjected to unprecedented social distancing measures. 
In this note we try to quantify, on the one hand, vulnerability from a socio-economic and psychological perspective and the epidemiological risk associated with the patterns of social contacts, on the other. For both aspects we have adopted a demographic perspective, looking in particular at the distribution of vulnerability and social contact patterns by age.