Professor Jospeh Wu of Hong Kong University (HKU) Medical School of Public Health, and Professor Gabriel Leung, chair of public health medicine at HKU Medical school and founding director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, have briefed reporters in Hong Kong on their research addressing the fatality risk of COVID-19.
The professors explained the challenges with the various numbers that have been announced, given the differences in methods of reporting and transparency of information from different countries, The Guardian reported.
Leung said that the 3.4 percent rate referencedby WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Tuesday was based on “bad data”—calculated from current numbers for the cumulative deaths among cumulative cases.
“This is the wrong number and will continue to be wrong unless and until the entire epidemic has run its full course,” he explained.
Leung added that different estimates were confusing because “you haven’t actually estimated the total number of infected cases … because you haven’t tested everybody.”
The modelling they are looking at, Leung said, involved three ways of studying the fatality rate: the infection fatality risk, the symptomatic fatality risk, and the hospitalization fatality risk.
He said that his current estimate of the symptomatic fatality rate, which considers deaths against the number of people presenting to health authorities with symptoms, stands at 1.4 percent.
But he added, “If it turns out that this disease, COVID-19, has quite a lot of asymptomatic cases, there will be very different estimates.”
And even at 1.4 percent, Leung said, “This is a very serious concern, especially among the older adult population.
“Children seem to be relatively spared,” he added, but schools remain closed “because of the precautionary principle: We cannot afford to be wrong.”
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