This is a meta-analysis of retrospective cohort studies summarizing available findings on the association between age, gender, comorbidities (the simultaneous presence of two chronic diseases or conditions in a patient) and risk of death from COVID-19 infections. The data were pulled from online databases to detect relevant publications up to 1 May 2020. Overall, 12 studies with a total of 26,235 patients and 1,117 cases of death were extracted for the association between comorbidities and COVID-19 mortality. Results showed that hypertension, CVDs, diabetes, COPD and cancer were associated with 270% (over two-fold), 372% (over three-fold), 241% (over two-fold), 353% (over three-fold) and 304% (over three-fold) higher risk of COVID-19 mortality, respectively. However, the limitations of the present study are a small sample size and potential biases such as representation of cases only in Wuhan, China. Importantly, the meta-analysis did not include smoking history and BMI, which are potential risk factors for disease severity and mortality.