The mortality rate associated with COVID-19 may be "considerably less than 1%," instead of the 2% reported by some groups, write Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and colleagues in an editorial published February 28 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The editorial appeared alongside a report by Wei-jie Guan, PhD, and colleagues, that characterized 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 from 552 hospitals in China through January 29, 2020. Guan is with the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Health, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University in China, "Guan et al report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity. If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%," Fauci and colleagues write.
"This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively."