A study of more than 44,000 coronavirus patients showed that around 15% of patients older than 80 have died.

Patients in their 50s had a death rate that was three times higher than the death rate for patients in their 40s.

Here's the death rate for every age bracket.

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The coronavirus has reached every continent except Antarctica, but it doesn't infect all patients equally.

A recent study from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed that the virus most seriously affected older people with preexisting health problems. About 80% of coronavirus cases are mild, the research showed.

The study collected data from more than 44,000 confirmed patients in China through February 11. It offers one of broadest depictions of how COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, operates in humans.

The data suggests a person's chances of dying from the disease increase with age. Here's the death rate for each age bracket, according to the study:

The study did not report any deaths in children younger than 10, who represented less than 1% of the patients.

Patients ages 10 to 19 had the same death rate as patients in their 30s, but patients in their 50s had a death rate that was three times higher than the death rate for patients in their 40s.

The death rate was dramatically higher among patients in their 70s and 80s, likely because many of those people have preexisting health issues.

Coronavirus patients with heart disease, for instance, had an about 10% death rate, according to the study, while those with diabetes had around a 7% death rate.

About three-quarters of the Chinese patients had no preexisting health problems. The death rate for that group was just under 1%.

Here's how the coronavirus compares with a handful of other major outbreaks.

Fatality statistics could change as the coronavirus spreads around the globe, however.

"If indeed we discover that there are far more cases than are actually being reported — and that one of the primary reasons for this is that we're just not detecting asymptomatic or mild or moderately symptomatic cases that don't end up seeking healthcare — then our estimates for the case fatality rate will likely decrease," Lauren Ancel Meyers, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas at Austin, told Business Insider.

In total, COVID-19 has killed more than 4,000 people and infected more than 116,000. It originated in Wuhan, central China's most populous city, and has since spread to more than 100 other countries. About 70% of cases are on the Chinese mainland.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misclassified the death rate included in the study as the mortality rate.

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