Coronavirus (COVID-19): how deadly is it?

Originally published on 26th February 2020.

The new coronavirus, known as COVID-19 or 2019-nCoV, has been centre-stage on headlines around the world ever since the virus first appeared in Wuhan, Hubei province, China in December 2019. Despite the fast rate at which the virus has been spreading around the world (to date there have been more than 400,000 infections), the mortality figures remain lower than those caused by the flu and Ebola. In fact, the coronaviruses of 2003 (SARS) and 2012 (MERS) were both more lethal and expanded a lot less geographically than COVID-19 so far. So how deadly is coronavirus (COVID-19)?

Although COVID-19 does present itself as possibly being declared a pandemic, and the number of cases is still increasing, the mortality rate remains low. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the proportion of deaths from coronavirus in Hubei province (the focus of contagion and where there have been the most deaths so far) is 2.9%, whilst in the rest of China there is a current case fatality rate of 2.3% (as of 26th February 2020), according to China’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. Furthermore, the majority of those whose lives have been claimed by coronavirus have either had pre-existing health problems, or have been of an advanced age.

What is a pandemic?

A pandemic refers to any disease that has spread across a large region, such as a continent, entire country or the whole world. It is important to note that even if a disease is declared a pandemic, it has nothing to do with how lethal the disease is considered to be.

How deadly is coronavirus COVID-19?

According to a report made by the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (the largest one done so far on this virus), it concludes that in only 2% of cases the virus is fatal. The study shows that 15% of those killed exceed 80 years of age, 8% are between 70 and 79 years of age, and that of the 416 children under 10 years infected in the area, none have died. In addition, the mortality rate is higher among men, which stands at 2.8% whilst that of women is 1.7%.

The report also shows that 80.9% of the new coronavirus infections are mild, 13.8% severe and 4.7% critical, which present with respiratory and multi-organ failure, and in some cases septic shock.

If we compare the incidence that coronavirus is having with other epidemics, we see that the figures are much less critical in this case. For example, the WHO estimates that annual epidemics of seasonal flu cause between 290,000 and 650,000 deaths. More specifically, it is thought that on average 600 people die from influenza (flu) every year in the UK, according to the University of Oxford’s Vaccine Knowledge Project, and in some years, this can peak to over 10,000 deaths. Hence, the flu claims more lives each year globally than the coronavirus has so far. When comparing COVID-19 to other coronaviruses, SARS had a mortality rate of 10%, and MERS had a mortality rate of 34%.

Read our article here that shares advice on how you can try to prevent spreading and catching coronavirus.