COVID 19 IN ROMANIA: ASSESSING PREVALENCE, MORTALITY AND FATALITY BY AGE AND GENDER IN THE FIRST 32 WEEKS OF THE PANDEMIC

Gender and age play an important role in shaping the risk of developing severe infection with COVID-19. The exposure to risks associated with COVID-19 differs by country, but the factors explaining the cross-national variations are not fully understood, while the analyses of incidence, mortality and fatality by gender and age cover a handful of countries, Romanian not included. This paper focuses on the unfolding of the COVID pandemic in Romania, looking at prevalence, mortality rate and case fatality rate by age and gender, over the first 32 weeks of the pandemic. Data retrieved from EUROSTAT and the weekly reports issued by the National Institute of Public Health (NIPH) reveals the uneven distribution of prevalence and fatality across gender and age groups. The results show that the infection was more spread among women between 40 and 59 years old, while men paid a higher death toll unevenly distributed across age groups.