The document discusses the estimated death rate of the coronavirus and factors that influence it. The UK government estimates the death rate is between 0.5-1%, though it may be lower because not all cases are confirmed. Older individuals and those with preexisting conditions are at higher risk, with the death rate almost 10 times higher for those over 80. However, most cases are mild. The true death rate is difficult to determine as many cases are mild and unreported, and rates vary depending on available healthcare and how extensively countries test.

1. How deadly is the coronavirus?
Sanjaya
Mar 24 · 4 min read
The UK government’s scienti c advisers believe that the chances of dying from a
coronavirus infection are between 0.5% and 1%.
This is lower than the rate of death among con rmed cases — which is 4% globally in
WHO gures and 5% in the UK as of March 23 — because not all infections are
con rmed by testing.
Discover the hidden truth about corona virus
Each country has its own way of deciding who gets tested, so comparing case numbers
or apparent death rates across countries can also be misleading.
Death rates also depend on a range of factors like your age and general health, and the
care you can access.
What are the risks for people like me?
The elderly and the unwell are more likely to die, if they contract coronavirus.
Current estimates from Imperial College London are that the death rate is almost 10
times higher than average for those over 80, and much lower for those under 40.
The UK government’s chief medical advisor, Professor Chris Whitty, says even though
the rates are higher for older people, “the great majority of older people will have a mild
or moderate disease”.
He also warns that we should not think it’s a trivial infection for younger people,
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2. He also warns that we should not think it’s a trivial infection for younger people,
pointing out that there are some young people who have ended up in intensive care.
It’s not just age that determines the risk of infections.
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In the rst big analysis of more than 44,000 cases from China, deaths were at least ve
times more common among con rmed cases with diabetes, high blood pressure or heart
or breathing problems.
All of these factors interact with each other and we don’t yet have a complete picture of
the risk for every type of person in every location.
And even though patterns in the death rates among con rmed cases can tell us who is
most at risk, they can’t tell us about the precise risk in any single group.
Discover the hidden truth about corona virus
The death rate in con rmed cases is not the overall
death rate
Most cases of most viruses go uncounted because people tend not to visit the doctor
with mild symptoms.
On 17 March, the chief scienti c adviser for the UK, Sir Patrick Vallance, estimated there
were about 55,000 cases in the UK, when the con rmed case count was just under
2,000.
Dividing deaths by 2,000 will give you a much higher death rate than dividing by
55,000.
That’s one of the biggest reasons why the death rates among con rmed cases are a bad
estimate of the true death rates: overestimating the severity by missing cases.
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But you can also get it wrong in the other direction: underestimating the death rate by
not taking into account those people currently infected who may eventually die.
Why do death rates di er between countries?
According to research by Imperial College, it’s because di erent countries are better or
worse at spotting the milder, harder to count cases.
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Countries use di erent tests for the virus, have di erent testing capacity and di erent
rules for who gets tested. All of these factors change over time.
The UK government plans to increase testing to 10,000 a day initially, with a goal of
reaching 25,000 a day within four weeks. It currently restricts testing mainly to people
in hospitals.
Germany has a daily testing capacity of more than 20,000 cases and has been testing

3. people with mild symptoms.
So their counts of con rmed infections could capture di erent sections of the pyramid
of cases shown above.
The death rate among con rmed cases in Germany (less than half a per cent) is among
the lowest in Europe, but is expected to rise as the mix of patients getting tested
changes.
Discover the hidden truth about corona virus
Your prognosis also depends on the treatment that’s available and whether the health
service can deliver it.
In turn, that depends on the stage of the epidemic.
If a healthcare system gets swamped with cases and intensive care units can’t treat
people who need ventilation, then the death rate would go up.
How do scientists work out the true death rate?
Scientists combine individual pieces of evidence about each of these questions to build a
picture of the death rate.
Discover the hidden truth about corona virus
For example, they estimate the proportion of cases with mild symptoms from small,
de ned groups of people who are monitored very tightly, like those on repatriated
ights.
But slightly di erent answers from these targeted pieces of evidence will add up to big
changes in the overall picture.
And the evidence will change over time.
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Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, points out that death
rates could go down as well as up.
“With Ebola, they came down over time as people got better at treating the disease” but
they can go up too: “If a healthcare system is overrun, then we see death rates rising”.
So scientists give a an upper and a lower gure, as well as a best current estimate.
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Have you been affected by the coronavirus? Or do you have any
information to share? Get in touch by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk
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Originally published at https://www.bbc.com on March 24, 2020.
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Sanjaya
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