Wuhan’s coronavirus 'death rate declining than previously'

In the wake of novel coronavirus when almost the entire world grapples with the pandemic, a new study has revealed that people who became sick from the contagion, now have a lower death rate in the Chinese city than previously thought.

The study, published recently in the journal Nature Medicine, calculated that people with COVID-19 symptoms in Wuhan had a 1.4 per cent likelihood of dying. Some previous estimates have ranged from 2 per cent to 3.4 per cent, New York Times reported.

Originated in Wuhan, the pandemic has hit more than 190 countries claiming over 18,000 lives globally. However, experts fear that Europe is the new epicentre with more than thousand deaths reported on daily basis.

Some experts suggest that such a benchmark — known as the symptomatic case fatality rate — could be lower in countries like the United States if measures like widespread business and school closures and appeals for social distancing have the desired effect of slowing the spread of the disease.

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“The experience gained from managing those initial patients and the increasing availability of newer, and potentially better, treatment modalities to more patients would presumably lead to fewer deaths, all else being equal,” wrote the study authors, a team that included scientists from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

But a 1.4 per cent case fatality rate still means many deaths. By comparison, the average seasonal flu kills about 0.1 per cent of the people it infects in the United States.

The new study calculated estimates based on cases in Wuhan as of February 29, when there had been 48,557 confirmed patients and 2,169 deaths. The risk of death increased with age, “unlike any previously reported pandemic or seasonal influenza,” the researchers wrote.

However, the overall symptomatic case fatality rate was 1.4 per cent, for people who were 60 and older it was 2.6 per cent. That makes the older age group about five times more vulnerable than people with symptoms who were 30 to 59 years old – whose risk of dying was 0.5 per cent. For those under 30, it was 0.3 per cent.

The new findings also indicate that “COVID-19 transmission is difficult to control,” they wrote, adding, “We might expect at least half of the population to be infected, even with aggressive use of community mitigation measures.”

The original story appeared on New York Times