Coronavirus fatality rate remains unknown as officials plan to reopen the economy - The... - 0 views
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a fundamental question about the coronavirus pandemic remains unanswered: Just how deadly is this disease?
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In Germany, fewer than three out of every 100 people with confirmed infections have died. In Italy the rate is almost five times higher, according to official figures.
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Singapore, renowned for its careful testing, contact tracing and isolation of patients, saw only 10 deaths out of 4,427 cases through April 16. That yields a strikingly low case fatality rate of 0.2 percent, about twice the rate of seasonal influenza.
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No one knows exactly how many people died from influenza in 1918; estimates range from 15 million to 100 million globally. Historians estimate that the virus killed about 675,000 people in the United States across three waves of the pandemic
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the rising rate may reflect the disease’s gradual progression, combined with discoveries of additional deaths.
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One scholarly estimate finds that the 1918-1920 pandemic killed 218 out of every 100,000 people living in the world at that time
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In Spain, the death toll already stands at 41 out of 100,000 people; in Belgium the number is 45. In New York state, it is 63, and that number rises even higher if you consider the “probable” death toll in New York City.
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The disease is far more likely to cause severe outcomes in older people, with the oldest cohorts the most vulnerable. That said, in every age group — even 85-plus — most people who contract the disease will recover.
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But more than a month later, the WHO number has gone even higher: On April 16, the WHO showed a global fatality rate of 6.6 percent among confirmed cases.
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Preliminary research indicates that the virus is not mutating significantly as it spreads, and so there is no evidence that some countries are dealing with a more virulent strain of SARS-CoV-2.
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the median age of patients in Italy is 63 or 64 years; the median age of patients in Germany is 47. The mortality is much lower [in Germany] because they avoided having the older population affected.”
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The other major factor in mortality is chronic disease. Most people hospitalized with severe cases of covid-19 have chronic health conditions such as diabetes, lung disease and heart disease. Where there is a high percentage of noncommunicable diseases like high blood pressure, the coronavirus will also be more deadly
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“We saw it everyday. African Americans have three times the rate of chronic kidney disease that Caucasians have, and 25 percent higher heart disease. They’ve got higher rates of diabetes, hypertension and asthma,” Duggan said. “I fully expect that when people are hit hard and they are on a ventilator to breathe and their body needs to fight the infection, that people who already have compromised hearts or kidneys or lungs are that much more in jeopardy.”
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Also critical is the nature, and robustness, of the national health system. For instance, Japan, where the current case fatality rate is 1.6 percent, and Singapore are reporting extremely high rates of hospitalization for coronavirus patients, at 80 percent and higher, figures that are unheard of in the United States. But this probably helps improve treatment and also reduces disease spread by isolating patients. The result is fewer deaths.
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Several of the countries with low fatality rates — Germany, South Korea, Norway — have very high rates of coronavirus testing. This gave them a better look at the disease within their borders.
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San Francisco General Hospital, noted that the hospital nearly tripled the capacity of its intensive care unit by adding doctors, nurses and technicians while the city adopted social distancing measures shortly ahead of New York.
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“We were ready for a surge that never happened,” Balmes said. “They’re every bit as good as we are in intensive care in New York, but the system was overwhelmed. We did physical distancing just a few days earlier than New York, but it was a few days to the good.”
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in a news conference that the global case fatality rate was 3.4 percent. That was treated as a revelation about the innate deadliness of the disease, but in fact was simply the WHO’s crude mortality ratio for confirmed covid-19 cases up to that point in time.
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“If, in fact, the case fatality rate is higher than the 1918 flu, then this one has the potential to kill even more people,
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A new study from researchers at Stanford, not yet peer-reviewed, looked for coronavirus antibodies in a sample population in Santa Clara County, Calif., and concluded that the actual infection rate in the county by early April was 50 to 85 times greater than the rate of confirmed cases.
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“The story of this virus is turning out to be more about its contagiousness and less about its case fatality rate,” said David Rubin, director of PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a University of Pennsylvania professor of pediatrics. “It’s less fatal than we thought, but it’s more contagious.”
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Where extensive testing has been done, estimates for the case fatality rate are often below 1 percent, The Post has found, suggesting these countries are getting closer to a rate that takes into account all infections
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In Iceland, which has tested over 10 percent of the population, vastly more than other countries, the fatality rate is just 0.5 percent.
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Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch has written that he and most experts suspect the fatality rate is about 1 to 2 percent for symptomatic cases. A 1 percent fatality rate is 10 times the average fatality rate for seasonal flu.
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“It’s probably about an order of magnitude higher for covid-19,” said Viboud, the NIH epidemiologist. “It’s more severe in terms of mortality than the pandemics we’ve seen since 1918.”