Caddo Coroner Breaks Down Latest Coronavirus Stats [VIDEO]
Caddo Parish Coroner Dr. Todd Thoma talks with 101.7 / 710 KEEL's Robert J Wright and Erin McCarty about the demographics of those most affected by COVID 19.
Thoma tells KEEL listeners about the demographic where the casuality rate is highest.. "The average age (in Caddo Parish) is a little over 70. It affects the elderly much worse than it does younger people.If you break the numbers down worldwide, it's a higher percentage for the older demographics, but it has more to do with their chronic medical conditions and overall health."
"It's comorbidities," Thoma continues, "The high risk people are the people with obesity, diabetes, hypertension, congestive heart failure, all the chronic medical conditions that go along with it. There's a very high correlation between people who have chronic medical conditions and death from Coronavirus."
And as far as breaking down cases by gender, the Coroner says, "Our cases follow the national numbers. Men make up about 60%. Our numbers are, as we've talked about before, heavily skewed toward the African-American community, but I think that's because of the prevalence of of more comorbid conditions. We're running about 70% African-Americans in Caddo Parish."
And what about a "second wave" of the virus as the Phase I reopenings expand. "I'm more of a pragmatist," I think we're going to see a bump," says the doctor, "It's going to go up. I don't know that we're going to see the peaks like we saw in April. As more people gather, we're going to see a bump, but nothing like we had before. The best indicator for me...is how many people are on ventilators. Well, we're down 80% from what we were a month ago. We had 500 people on ventilators. Now we're down to to about 110."