COVID-19 kills children with intellectual disabilities at higher rates. Here’s why
Several papers have shown how devastating the novel coronavirus has been for the elderly, minorities and people with underlying health conditions, but some researchers point out that studies on individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities are lacking.
Now, new research shows people with disabilities such as cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and autism are more likely to become infected by and die from COVID-19, especially at younger ages.
Part of the reason being that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are more likely to have pre-existing health conditions that increase their risks of severe consequences.
The study was published May 24 in the Disability and Health Journal.
“This paucity of data on COVID-19 trends among the IDD population further exposes the reality that there is no adequate surveillance structure in place to monitor COVID-19, or other public health outcomes, among the IDD population,” the study said.
“This is even more disconcerting during this time in which populations with higher prevalence of identified co-morbidities, such as people with IDD, may be at increased risk of developing severe outcomes, including death, from COVID-19.”
About 2.6 to 4 million people in the U.S. have IDD that can include more common disabilities such as Down syndrome, but also rare ones such as Prader-Willi syndrome, the study said.
They’re also more likely to have hypertension, heart disease, respiratory disease and diabetes, “which are identified as risk factors for poor outcomes from COVID-19,” the researchers said.
Other research shows people with IDD have lower life expectancies, according to the World Health Organization.
What did the study find?
The researchers analyzed data from TriNetX — an electronic medical record database that includes information from 42 health care organizations — on 30,282 test-confirmed coronavirus patients: 474 with IDD and 29,808 without.
The patients received their positive diagnosis between Jan. 20 and May 14, the study said.
The overall fatality rate for people with and without IDD was about the same (5.1% and 5.4%, respectively), but the rate “conceals important age-related similarities,” the researchers said.
For patients between 0 and 17 years of age, those with IDD had a fatality rate of 1.6%, while those without IDD had a fatality rate of less than 0.1%, the study revealed.
“For those ages 18-74, the case-fatality rate was 4.5% among patients with IDD and 2.7% among patients without IDD,” the researchers said.
In other words, if 100,000 people with IDD got infected with the coronavirus, about 4,500 would die, study co-author Scott Landes, an associate professor of sociology at Syracuse University in New York, told Forbes.
And “among 100,000 individuals without IDD, we would expect 2,700 to die. That would be an excess of 1,800 IDD deaths and in my mind that is unacceptable.”
At the same time, the chances of contracting COVID-19 were about the same for people with and without IDD, but it was “remarkably higher” for those with the disabilities (26%) versus those without them (3%) at 17 years old and younger.
A separate NPR analysis found similar results in two states.
In Pennsylvania, people with intellectual disabilities and autism who tested positive for COVID-19 die twice as much as other non-IDD coronavirus individuals, the outlet reported.
In New York, people with IDD “die at a rate 2.5 times the rate of others who contract the virus,” NPR found.
The high rate of death “is disturbing, but it’s not surprising,” Landes told the outlet.
“These people are marginalized across the spectrum,” Christopher Rodriguez, executive director of Disability Rights Louisiana, which monitors the state’s homes for the disabled, told Voice of America.
“If you have developmental disabilities, you are seen as less than human. You can see it in education, civil rights, employment. And now, you can see it by how they are being treated during the pandemic,” Rodriguez says of the lack of regulation, and therefore COVID-19 data, for people with disabilities.
This story was originally published June 11, 2020 at 6:32 PM with the headline "COVID-19 kills children with intellectual disabilities at higher rates. Here’s why."
