Posted on 03/11/2020 12:15:51 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Infectious disease specialists and health experts say that while cases of the new coronavirus will likely continue to grow in the United States, current case fatality rates appear to be an overestimation.
Cases of the virus have jumped over the past few days, now with over 1,000 confirmed across the United States, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at John Hopkins University. As of this writing, there have been at least 32 coronavirus-linked deaths.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on March 3, global case fatality rate is “about 3.4 percent.” But a handful of public health experts told The Epoch Times the case fatality rate—”the proportion of persons with a particular condition who die from that condition,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—in the United States is lower than the 2 or 3 percent currently estimated.
Harry Scholtz, vice president of infectious disease and infection prevention at BEAM Telemedicine and Healthcare, told The Epoch Times that the estimated fatality rate is “likely an overestimate.”
“It disproportionately includes elderly patients with medical conditions and not anyone who was untested and recovered fully,” Scholtz, an infectious disease physician, said.
At the same time, the incubation period for coronavirus can be as long as 24 days according to the largest study analyzing patients of the disease so far—another indication the number of actual cases is likely higher than reported. Some patients are also testing positive for the virus while showing no symptoms at all, according to a letter published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
“Young people (under 15) had no severe illness whatsoever,” Scholtz said. “It could be that they already possess antibodies that provide protection against COVID-19, or their immune systems are better able to fight off .”
(Excerpt) Read more at theepochtimes.com ...
But they tend to be more densely packed together.
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