Heard often on social media: “How does COVID-19 affect me? Am I toast?” In our BocaFirst COVID-19 Tracker project, we have sought to cull useful data from trusted sources and visualize them in accurate, truthful and meaningful ways. Some are quick to understand while others take some staring at.
A few readers recently asked about the effects of COVID-19 on different age groups in our area. We did some digging and found a Florida Department of Health webpage that offered information about all confirmed cases in Florida (both resident and non-resident). In addition to county and gender demographics, they also provided the age for each case. So we sorted and tallied the numbers.

Breaking it down by age
The total number of reported cases depends greatly on where and how much you test. Counts of positive tests by themselves may not mean much. However, in the FDOH data, there was also the following information for each confirmed case:
- The date of the positive test
- Age group
- Hospitalization?
- Death?
- Emergency Department (ED) visit?
We narrowed the data to Palm Beach county and categorized the cases by age group. Then we sorted them by the date the test was taken. Since some cases had “UNKNOWN” or “NA” for the information, we tallied only those with “YES” for Hospital, ED Visit etc. The graphics below show how the different age groups were affected between March 1 and June 13 in terms of ED Visits, Hospitalizations, and Deaths.
In reading the graphics, it’s important to bear in mind that there is a delay between the test date and the event (ED visit, hospitalization etc).
COVID-19 affect on age groups?
NOTES: • Some tests may not have had the death, ED Visit or hospitalization event yet. Therefore data for the period after June 1st is designated incomplete. • A 7 day moving average is used to even out the fluctuations of daily reports. • The data used is from June 13.
OVERALL

Deaths by age group March 1-June 13

ED Visit by age group March 1 – June 13

Hospitalizations by age group March 1 – June 13

For more information
The BocaFirst COVID-19 Tracker has an assortment of graphics. The Florida Department of Health has a web page that lets you explore current data in various ways. It’s updated daily. Click the screen shot below to go there and select the “Cases by Zipcode” tab along the bottom.
