What does the Chinese study about the Coronavirus tell us about the disease?

Faisal Khan

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Covid-19 or the Coronavirus has created one of the biggest pandemic scares in recent history. The disease is already causing widespread problems — financial markets meltdown, supply chain disruptions, travel restrictions, schools & business closures to name a few. The peculiar nature of the disease and the lack of understanding of how it spreads is causing the hysteria.

A California man who was diagnosed with the virus earlier had no travel history or known interaction with another person having the disease. The global authorities are scrambling to find the cure. The bigger question is if the world is well equipped to deal with a pandemic? With 62 countries reporting confirmed cases now, time is not on their side. At the time of writing, there were 83,867 cases globally, 36,686 recoveries and 2,867 deaths.

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC) has now published a massive study of more than 44,000 confirmed COVID-19 patients which could go a long way in addressing the information gap of the disease — a sentiment echoed by the WHO authorities recently.

“These data give us a better understanding about the age range of people affected, the severity of the disease and the mortality rate. As such, they are very important in enabling the WHO to provide good evidence-based advice to countries.”

~ Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

Here are some of the major takeaways from the report:

Overall, the fatality rate came in at 2.3% (1023) of the 44,672 confirmed cases examined.

The highest number of fatalities was recorded in people over the age of 50, with the fatality rate in patients over the age of 80 coming in at a staggering 14.8%.

Of the 20,000 confirmed cases in the age group below 49, the fatality rate was a mere 0.3% (64).

Surprisingly, no deaths were noted in children up to nine years of age, despite 416 confirmed cases, considering the elderly and children are traditionally most vulnerable to viruses.

The severity of the disease has been classified as mild with 80% of the confirmed cases were suffering from mild symptoms.

Risks for people with pre-existing conditions remain elevated as covered in an earlier study too. Fatality rates for various pre-existing conditions were as follows — cardiovascular disease (10.5%), diabetes (7.3%), chronic respiratory disease (6.3%) and hypertension (6%).

While the report produced by The Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Emergency Response Epidemiology Team optimistically points to a decrease in the new cases in China, it may just be due to strong emergency and quarantine measures taken by the government there.

The global picture (image above) still points to a disease that has spread to all continents now. And the World Health Organization has warned against letting the guard down as this early wane in cases could just be due to the precautionary measure taken to control the spread.

On the positive side, efforts to develop a vaccination have ramped up publicly & privately— results of an initial vaccine by an American health company Gilead Sciences being trialed in China right now are due sometime in April.