The global death toll from the Covid-19 epidemic has crossed the 1 million mark. Despite this, experts are still skeptical about how to calculate the mortality rate of infected patients in the epidemic. These issues are important to better understand the mortality of Covid-19.
How is the death rate calculated?
A true mortality means comparing deaths against total cases of infection, but a thorough assessment of asymptomatic cases is difficult. Because, there are many people who get infected but do not experience symptoms.
Total infection cases exceed confirmed cases:
Scientists say the total number of infections is far more than the 30 million confirmed cases globally. Many experts believe that between 0.5% and 1% of corona infected people are dying. Researchers find the level of risk according to age group and it is found that people and children of younger age are less likely to have serious illness.
Elderly Mortality Rate:
According to Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute of Health Matrix and Evaluation at the University of Washington, Seattle, one death per 10,000 patients under the age of 20 has occurred. While one in every six patients aged 85 years has died.
What is the case fatality rate?
There is a clear decline in mortality when calculated against the number of new infections confirmed by the corona virus test. According to Reuters data, the case fatality rate has decreased dramatically in places like the US. It was 6.6% in April, down from just 2% in August.
Reasons for declining fetality rates:
Experts say the decline is due to the extensive testing being done to detect people with mild symptoms or no symptoms of the disease compared to the early days of the epidemic. At the same time, this decline also contributes to the improvement of treatment of serious patients and the efforts to protect the people in the highest risk group. Dr. Amesh Adalja of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, says that we now know more about identifying and treating potential complications. If a corona is being infected, it will receive better treatment now than in March.
Its Meaning for Individuals and Governments:
There is a need for constant vigilance at the individual and governmental level to avoid corona, as a second wave of infection has begun in some countries. For example, researchers in France estimate that the country’s case fatality rate dropped to 46% by the end of July compared to the end of May. More tests, improvements in medical care and infections are mostly found in young people, with less chances of serious illness. Mirkea Sofia, a researcher at the University of Montpellier, France, said that we are now seeing a renewed increase in hospital and ICU registrations, meaning that this discrepancy is about to end. We have to find and understand the reason for this.
