Health Benefits of Residence at Moderate Altitude Do Not Reduce COVID-19 Mortality

Johannes Burtscher, Gregoire P. Millet, Barbara Leitner and Martin Burtscher ()
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Johannes Burtscher: Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Lausanne, CH-1005 Lausanne, Switzerland
Gregoire P. Millet: Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Lausanne, CH-1005 Lausanne, Switzerland
Barbara Leitner: Directorate Population, Statistics Austria, A-1110 Vienna, Austria
Martin Burtscher: Department of Sport Science, University of Innsbruck, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 23, 1-7

Abstract: Moderate altitude (1000–2000 m above sea level) residence is emerging as a protective factor from the mortality of various causes, including of cardiovascular diseases. Conversely, mortality from certain respiratory diseases is higher at these altitudes than in lowlands. These divergent outcomes could indicate either beneficial or detrimental effects of altitude on the mortality of COVID-19 that primarily infects the respiratory tract but results in multi-organ damage. Previous epidemiological data indeed suggest divergent outcomes of moderate to high altitude residence in various countries. Confounding factors, such as variations in the access to clinical facilities or selection biases of investigated populations, may contribute to the equivocation of these observations. We interrogated a dataset of the complete population of an Alpine country in the center of Europe with relatively similar testing and clinical support conditions across altitude-levels of residence (up to around 2000 m) to assess altitude-dependent mortality from COVID-19 throughout 2020. While a reduced all-cause mortality was confirmed for people living higher than 1000 m, no differences in the mortality from COVID-19 between the lowest and the highest altitude regions were observed for the overall population and the population older than 60 years as well. Conversely, COVID-19 mortality seems to have been reduced in the very old (>85 years) women at moderate altitudes.

Keywords: COVID; coronavirus; altitude; hypoxia; mortality; aging (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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