Summary of research into the question of How Deadly Is Covid-19?

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Tue, 2020-07-21 13:54 — mike kraft

How Deadly Is Covid-19? Researchers Are Getting Closer to an Answer Recent estimates suggest the new coronavirus is deadlier than the seasonal flu, though not as lethal as Ebola. Still, Covid-19 is killing more people than a number of deadlier diseases in part because it is more infectious. Brianna Abbott and Jason Douglas WSJ

Research suggests the new coronavirus kills about five to 10 people for every 1,000 that it infects, though rate varies based on age and access to health care

...Researchers, initially analyzing data from outbreaks on cruise ships and more recently from surveys of thousands of people in virus hot spots, have now conducted dozens of studies to calculate the infection fatality rate of Covid-19.

That research—examining deaths out of the total number of infections, which includes unreported cases—suggests that Covid-19 kills from around 0.3% to 1.5% of people infected. Most studies put the rate between 0.5% and 1.0%, meaning that for every 1,000 people who get infected, from five to 10 would die on average.

A comparison of 26 studies that estimate the disease's infection fatality rate* found varying results but pinpointed an overall rate of around 6.8 deaths per 1,000 infections.

The estimates suggest the new coronavirus is deadlier than the seasonal flu, though not as lethal as Ebola and other infectious diseases that have emerged in recent years. The coronavirus is killing more people than the deadlier diseases, however, in part because it is more infectious.

“It’s not just what the infection-fatality rate is. It’s also how contagious the disease is, and Covid is very contagious,” said Eric Toner, an emergency medicine physician and senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, who studies health-care preparedness for epidemics and infectious diseases. “It’s the combination of the fatality rate and the infectiousness that makes this such a dangerous disease.”

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