When it comes to issues affecting older adults, it’s impossible to understate the significance of COVID-19. Early on, it became clear that age played a large role in negative outcomes, including hospitalization and death. Between the outset of COVID-19 in Georgia and the end of April 2021, a reported 375,058 residents in the 10-county area contracted COVID-19, 23,210 of these residents landed in the hospital, and 5,741 of these residents died of COVID-19. Here, we are looking at how cases, deaths and hospitalizations impact different age cohorts in the Atlanta area and put it into the context of our overall population.

Chart 1 shows the share of cases by age group, using data downloaded April 30, 2021, with cases by age grouping from the outset of the pandemic in Georgia. It reveals that as least when it comes to contracting COVID-19, younger adults most definitely aren’t at any decreased risk, as those ages 18 to 29 account for nearly a quarter of the 10-county’s total cases. This is little surprise, however, when you compare it to the second chart, which shows the age distribution of our overall population — if anything, you could say young adults are over-represented in case loads. Big picture, though, the two charts tell us that with the exception of children (and especially young ones) we’re all about equally likely to contract COVID-19.

Where we see a truly dramatic story unfold, however, is just how over-represented older adults are when it comes to shares of COVID-19 cases that lead to hospitalization and death. For every case of COVID-19, we see five cases under the age of 60 for every case over the age of 60. But when it comes to deaths, we see it flip such that just one person under the age of 60 dies for every five deaths over the age of 60.

So just how big of an impact has COVID-19 had on metro Atlanta? While many of us have experienced some element of the economic and the emotional toll brought on by the pandemic, we can also get some small sense of its impacts on our metro area at large by comparing cases, deaths and hospitalizations to ACS 2019 population figures. The infographic below shows just how many people were personally impacted by contracting COVID-19.