Estimated mortality from coronavirus: the figures are different than initially thought

How Delphi said Mindaugas Stankūnas, a professor at the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences (LSMU), in the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, death rates were really high.

“When it was the first months of the virus, the death rates in China, Uhane, were around 12 percent. This means that one in ten people with coronavirus died. In other Chinese provinces, it was a small percentage. But this is very explanatory, because at the beginning, the Chinese health system itself did not know how to react here, from the beginning, “said the professor.

Even higher death rates were also recorded in northern Italy.

“The same can be observed when the virus reached northern Italy, in the Lombardy region. The first publications, around March, then mortality was recorded at around 16 percent. Approximately every 6 people who were diagnosed with the disease died there, ”said M. Stankūnas.

The LSMU professor urged not to confuse the concepts.

“Let’s separate the concepts: mortality and mortality. Mortality: how many deaths per 100,000. Mortality of the country’s population: what proportion of those who died from a particular disease died. In the public sphere, these concepts are often they confuse, ”he said.

According to the interviewee, only population serological surveys have shown that official morbidity data are much lower.

“But now, after a while, we see that the mortality rate of all diagnosed patients is around 3 to 4 percent. The point, however, is that we are officially diagnosing and diagnosing the disease only for a certain sector. The actual degree of infection of people can be determined by so-called antibody or serological tests. This is now being done by practically all European countries, including Lithuania. It shows that the official figures we see in the press are much lower than the real scale of the people affected by the pandemic, ”he said.

According to these figures, the death rate is also decreasing.

For example, we see figures already published that in Spain, Madrid had about 10 percent of the cases, other countries also saw after these studies that the real figures are about 10 times higher than the fixed statistics. When we start calculating mortality not from official figures, but from how real they might have been, the mortality rate drops significantly, ”said Professor M. Stankūnas from LSMU.

The interviewee said that this is illustrated by a very recent scientific article on the situation in Switzerland.

“A study in Geneva found that coronavirus mortality in all age groups is 0.64 percent. That number is small, actually it is less than one percent of all people who become infected and die,” he explained the LSMU representative.

Studies conducted in Geneva have shown that the death rate for people over 65 years of age exceeds 5 percent. Mortality is much lower among people aged 50 to 64, at 0.14 percent.

When asked to explain what this should mean for an ordinary resident, M. Stankūnas emphasized people at risk.

“It should make it clear that mortality is not high for middle-aged people. However, in the groups with higher risk, it is higher, considerable. But it may not be as big as it was at the beginning. ” Delphi M. Stankūnas said.

Delphi remember that serological tests are also being carried out in Lithuania. Residents surveyed will complete the survey before the end of next week.