This study analyzed 191,392 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases and 20,141 confirmed and probable COVID-19 deaths among New York City (NYC) residents from March 1-May 16, 2020. The researchers applied a network model-inference system developed to support the City's pandemic response to estimate underlying SARS-CoV-2 infection rates.

Based on these estimates, the researchers further estimated the infection fatality risk (IFR) for 5 age groups and overall.

They estimated an overall IFR of 1.45% (95% Credible Interval: 1.09-1.87%) in NYC. Weekly IFR was estimated as high as 6.1% for 65-74 year-olds and 17.0% for 75+ year-olds.