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Source: https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/25/...o-expert-says/
New data from China buttress fears about high coronavirus fatality rate, WHO expert says
By Helen Branswell
February 25, 2020
One of the hopes of people watching China’s coronavirus outbreak was that the alarming picture of its lethality is probably exaggerated because a lot of mild cases are likely being missed.
But on Tuesday, a World Health Organization expert suggested that does not appear to be the case. Bruce Aylward, who led an international mission to China to learn about the virus and China’s response, said the specialists did not see evidence that a large number of mild cases of the novel disease called Covid-19 are evading detection.
“So I know everybody’s been out there saying, ‘Whoa, this thing is spreading everywhere and we just can’t see it, tip of the iceberg.’ But the data that we do have don’t support that,” Aylward said during a briefing for journalists at WHO’s Geneva headquarters.
Getting a handle on how many people have actually been infected is crucial to assessing how dangerous this virus is. During the early days of an explosive outbreak with a new pathogen, it is hugely challenging to look beyond the people streaming into hospitals for care to see whether there are many more at home with a mild cold or manageable flu-like illness.
If large numbers of mild or virtually symptom-free cases are evading detection, that would suggest that estimates of the proportion of people who might end up in ICUs or might die during a Covid-19 epidemic would be lower than what has been seen to date in China...
Read more: https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/25/...o-expert-says/
New data from China buttress fears about high coronavirus fatality rate, WHO expert says
By Helen Branswell
February 25, 2020
One of the hopes of people watching China’s coronavirus outbreak was that the alarming picture of its lethality is probably exaggerated because a lot of mild cases are likely being missed.
But on Tuesday, a World Health Organization expert suggested that does not appear to be the case. Bruce Aylward, who led an international mission to China to learn about the virus and China’s response, said the specialists did not see evidence that a large number of mild cases of the novel disease called Covid-19 are evading detection.
“So I know everybody’s been out there saying, ‘Whoa, this thing is spreading everywhere and we just can’t see it, tip of the iceberg.’ But the data that we do have don’t support that,” Aylward said during a briefing for journalists at WHO’s Geneva headquarters.
Getting a handle on how many people have actually been infected is crucial to assessing how dangerous this virus is. During the early days of an explosive outbreak with a new pathogen, it is hugely challenging to look beyond the people streaming into hospitals for care to see whether there are many more at home with a mild cold or manageable flu-like illness.
If large numbers of mild or virtually symptom-free cases are evading detection, that would suggest that estimates of the proportion of people who might end up in ICUs or might die during a Covid-19 epidemic would be lower than what has been seen to date in China...
Read more: https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/25/...o-expert-says/
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