An index of municipality-level vulnerability to COVID-19 in Mexico

Abstract

In face to the novel COVID-19 and the high mortality ratio associated with different comorbidities in Mexico (and elsewhere), we identified the need to characterize the risk of regional population to COVID-19, exclusively as a result of their health status. With data from the 2018 National Health and Nutrition Survey (ENSANUT), we have calculated a vulnerability index that includes hypertension, diabetes, obesity, chronic renal insufficiency, smoking, and cardiovascular diseases, as well as age cohort and sex at the municipal level. With the vulnerability index we calculated the population at risk and, in combination with hospitalization beds, the population that can be effectively treated at each municipality. Although, COVID-19 has already hit Mexico, the index serves as a planning policy tool to implement preventive actions on those vulnerable regions. We show that, given unhealthy habits, the population at risk in Mexico is close to 78.2 million. Particularly, we observed that poor areas have less comorbidities than rich areas. However, they also have poorer access to health infrastructure which diminishes municipalities’ resilience to COVID-19. Furthermore, highly populated municipalities appear to have a higher vulnerability index