It is too soon to know how many will die from covid-19
of deaths among people infected by the new coronavirus mounts, it is tempting to divide that figure by the number of reported cases and conclude that the result is the fatality rate. Apply such maths to the world’s total of confirmed cases and deaths on March 11th and you get a fatality rate of 3.6%. But this figure, which epidemiologists call the “naive” case fatality rate, may be wrong in two different ways.
A conclusive measure of the denominator requires testing for antibodies against the virus in a large sample of people in a place which an outbreak has already swept through. Such studies are under way in China. In the meantime, researchers have estimated the fatality rate for covid-19 using a cohort of people for whom there is a full count of infections and deaths: passengers on thecruise ship. A bungled quarantine on board led to nearly 700 cases of covid-19. Eight people have died so far.
The researchers applied the results from the ship to data on covid-19 cases and deaths in China. They conclude that the fatality rate for covid-19 in the country’s outbreak was 0.5%. For comparison, that is five times the fatality rate for the seasonal flu in America.was higher partly because their average age was 58, older than the general population in any country. At the same time, they are probably in fairly good shape. They must be healthy enough to embark on an extended holiday.
A recent study by researchers at the University of Bern, in Switzerland, sheds more light. It provides estimates of covid-19 fatality by age group in Hubei, the province in China with the worst outbreak of the disease . Fatality is dramatically higher among people older than 60, rising to 18% among those in their 80s or older.
But covid-19 may prove no less devastating for poor countries, which tend to have younger populations. The disease is more severe in people whose immune systems are weakened by chronic diseases, so those who are malnourished or haveThe fatality rate in any country will depend primarily on the quality of care it can provide—and how many people have access to it.
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