Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Public Health England report stating that the largest number of people in critical care due to COVID-19 are aged between 50 and 70, whether they consider this age group to be particularly vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19.

Public Health England’s report found that COVID-19 diagnosis rates increased with age for both males and females. When compared to all-cause mortality in previous years, deaths from COVID-19 have a slightly older age distribution, particularly for males.

Among people with a positive test, those who were between 50-59 were nine times more likely to die, compared with those under 40. Also, people who were between 60-69 were 25 times more likely to die than those under 40.

These disparities exist after taking ethnicity, deprivation and region into account, but they do not account for the effect of comorbidities or occupation, which may explain some of the differences.