• Divakara Gouda, Preet Mohinder Singh, Prabhakara Gouda, and Basavana Goudra.
• From the Rowan School of Osteopathic Medicine, Stratford, NJ (DG); Department of Anesthesiology, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO (PMS); Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO (PG); Perelman School of Medicine, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (BG).
• J Am Board Fam Med. 2021 Feb 1; 34 (Suppl): S244-S246.

ObjectivesAs of May 13, 2020, 1004 health care worker (HCW) deaths due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have been reported globally. This study seeks to organize deaths by demographic group, including age, gender, country, and occupation.MethodsWe collected data from a crowdsourced list of global HCW COVID-19 deaths published by Medscape, including age, gender, country, occupation, and physician specialty.ResultsAs of May 13, 2020, of 1004 HCW deaths, 550 were physicians. The average age of physician death is 62.49, skewed right, and nonphysician is 52.62, approximately symmetrical. The majority of U.S. HCW deaths are male (64.1%). General practitioners and family medicine and primary care physicians account for 26.9% of physician deaths. Anesthesiologists and emergency medicine and critical care physicians account for 7.4%. The United States has the highest number of HCW deaths but a similar number as a fraction of national cases and deaths compared with other developed countries.ConclusionsAmong HCWs globally, in the United States there have been more reported deaths of physicians, primary care physicians, males, and HCWs versus opposing groups. Further research is needed to understand relative risks of death due to COVID-19 in each of these demographic groups.© Copyright 2021 by the American Board of Family Medicine.

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