FATORES DE RISCO, ASPECTOS SOCIOECONÔMICOS E DEMOGRÁFICOS ASSOCIADOS COM A TAXA DE MORTALIDADE POR SARS-COV-2 NO BRASIL

Abstract

ABSTRACT – The current pandemic of the disease known as COVID-19 is caused by a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Since December 2019 in the city of Wuhan, China, more than 567 million infections have been reported resulting in over 6.38 million deaths worldwide. In Brazil, from March 2020 to February 2021, COVID-19 was responsible for more than 250,000 deaths. Understanding the relationships between risk factors and mortality rate in a country marked by socioeconomic inequalities and other health risks is necessary for addressing this disease. This study aimed to evaluate how risk factors and socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of patients with COVID-19, affected by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), influence the chances of mortality from the disease in Brazil. To this end, the data base from the Information System for Influenza Surveillance (Sivep-Gripe), IBGE and others was used, bringing together information on comorbidities and other socioeconomic and demographic factors. After, a multilevel Logit regression was adopted to estimate the effects of comorbidities, socioeconomic characteristics and other risk factors on the probabilities of mortality from COVID-19. The results indicate that the investigated factors are significant in explaining the COVID-19 mortality rates. Among the comorbidities, obesity stands out, showing a 70% increase in the chances of death when compared to non-obese individuals. In terms of socioeconomic factors, greater income inequality is associated with higher mortality, as an increase of 0.01 in the Gini index increases the probability of death by 1.16%. Additionally, this study found an inverse relationship between the number of physical activity establishments and the COVID-19 mortality rate in Brazil. This means that the greater the number of physical activity establishments per 100,000 inhabitants, the lower the probability of death from COVID-19. According to the study results, the increase of one establishment per 100,000 inhabitants decreases the probability of death by 0.63% (p-value < 0.01). This suggests that the availability of places for physical activity can be a protective factor against COVID-19 and can be considered in the formulation of public policies for addressing the pandemic. Therefore, this study contributes with findings for the formulation of strategies in public policies for addressing pandemics such as COVID-19 by highlighting, above all, the role of inequality and physical activity establishments in this context.