Why The Death Rate From Coronavirus Is Plunging In China
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
When it comes to the spiraling global coronavirus outbreak, scientists are still trying to pin down the answer to a basic question: How deadly is this virus?
Estimates have varied widely. For instance, at a Feb. 24 news conference in Beijing, a top Chinese health official, Liang Wannian, said the fatality rate for COVID-19 was quite high.
"Between 3 to 4% of patients have died," said Liang.
Then he added a twist. Outside of Wuhan — the city at the epicenter of the outbreak — the death rate in China has been much lower: about 0.7%. That's fewer than 1 fatality per 100 cases.
Similarly, a study released by China's Center for Disease Control last month found that if you factor out all the data from Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, the fatality rate in the rest of China drops to 0.4%.
Why such a big difference between Hubei and the rest of China?
At a news conference the next day, Dr. Bruce Aylward — who had just concluded a fact-finding mission to China for the World Health Organization — pointed to three likely factors.
First, said Aylward, is that Wuhan suffered from being the first place where the new coronavirus surfaced. "Wuhan started fast and, and early. People didn't know what we were dealing with. We were learning how to treat this."
The more patients medical staff saw, the more they could start identifying what kind of supportive care made a difference. So by the time patients started showing up in hospitals in other provinces, doctors and nurses there had a lot more information about what it takes to keep patients alive
Hospitals in the rest of world will likely also benefit from that knowledge.
The second reason for the higher death rate in Hubei "was just the sheer scale of the numbers," said Aylward.
Hospitals in Wuhan were flooded with thousands of sick people. That stressed their capacity to provide the kind of round-the-clock intensive care needed for a patient with a critical case of COVID-19.
Elsewhere in China the caseload was much lower.
The implication for other countries: It's worth trying to at least slow the pace of an outbreak with measures to keep the number of patients from overwhelming local hospitals.
The final factor, says Aylward, "At the beginning of this outbreak remember, people were finding severe disease. And that's why the alarm bells went off."
Those early severe cases made COVID-19 look like a much bigger killer. It was only after officials in China stepped up surveillance that they started uncovering many more mild cases (people with symptoms such as fever and dry cough but limited or no pneumonia).
All of this may also help explain why over time the death rate for COVID-19 has steadily dropped.
According to the China CDC study, among patients whose symptoms started between Jan. 1 and Jan. 10 the death rate was 15.6%. But it was just 0.8% among those who didn't get sick until Feb. 1 to Feb. 11.
That pattern of progressively dropping death rates is one we're likely to see in other countries.
In other words, there's a good chance the fatality rate in nations with good health systems will end up being a lot lower than what was first seen in China.
Still, it's worth noting that even after China got the death rate down to 0.7%, or even 0.4%, that's still about four to seven times greater than the death rate for seasonal flu. (The rate for the flu is about 0.1% — or 1 in 1,000 patients.)
Also, the China CDC study shows that for coronavirus patients ages 70 to 79 the death rate more than triples. For those older than 80 it's more than six times as high.
Anna Yeung-Cheung, a microbiologist at Manhattanville College in New York, says she also worries about health workers.
Yeung-Cheung, who is originally from Hong Kong, notes that many doctors there died during the SARS coronavirus outbreak of 2002-2003. And hundreds of Chinese health workers have been sickened in the COVID-19 outbreak — possibly, at least in part, because they were working so hard, she says.
Sure, says Yeung-Cheung, "They're young. But we need to take into account the stress that they are undergoing. This is stress to their body."
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It's amazing how the left wing media and the Chicken littles ignore that once China identified they had a new virus that the numbers went down. Also with testing it was found that the TDS sufferers talking points of a 7% fatality just isn't true. But hey it's the new thing for the perpetually offended to piss and moan about.
It was never said by either the WHO or the CDC that the mortality rate was 7%. The least I read was 2% and the most was 4%.
Did I say they said that?
Well, that is all that I have seen being reported, so I am not sure where that 7% figure.
The next time a TDS sufferer spews it be sure to ask them where they got that figure...
If I see it, I will correct it for sure.
As a person who taught biology for 10+ years, I hate disinformation. There are plenty of reputable sources to go to not to be misinformed.
Being on the ground here in China, and with speaking with my Doctor friend who works in a hospital here, the one who has taken me to the Expats Thanksgiving dinner for the past 2 times, and whose 7 year old daughter he brings here on Saturdays for me to help with her English, and who had given us a supply of the surgical masks the doctors are wearing, and I'm sure he knows the truth of what's happening, I think I have a better picture of the truth than your media and propaganda spreaders.
The seed above makes perfect sense to me. As well, a few days ago I was aware that Chongqing, the city-state in which I live that has a population of 32 million, had experienced less than 600 cases with only 6 deaths (a little less than 1% mortality), and at this time well under 50 remain in hospital with the rest recovered, and there have been no new cases for more than two weeks. the neighbourhood is waking up with many stores and restaurants opening, people are walking around now, albeit everyone wears a mask, so I believe the worst is now over.
Now, I consider the people of Chongqing to be generally more sophisticated than many other places in China, and if you were to draw a comparison population-wise with the USA I would be willing to guess that you could multiply the numbers for Chongqing by ten as a prediction for what will probably occur in the USA. In other words, I predict that you will see 6000 cases or less, 60 or less deaths, and a run of 4 to 5 months. Of course if your health care screws it up, like CDC screwed up the testing, the numbers are bound to increase.
I have just seen that my predictions for the USA are way too low. I had thought that the USA as a whole would have a better health care system than Chongqing and that the population would know at least as well to voluntarily deal with it as the people here have done.