‘The death rate of coronavirus may be half of what world health chiefs expected it to be, according to a study.
International researchers compiled data on coronavirus cases in Wuhan, the Chinese city of 11million people where the deadly disease emerged in December 2019.
They found that, overall, the number of people who died after getting sick with the coronavirus was 1.4 per cent.
In comparison, estimations by the World Health Organization in early March said 3.4 per cent of diagnosed patients had died.
And the true figure is likely to be even lower because so many people are believed to be going undiagnosed.
By comparison the death rate of flu is around 0.1 per cent.
Coronavirus patients often don’t know they’re infected – as many as eight out of 10 could have no symptoms in the early stages of an outbreak, according to one study –because they get such mild signs that they don’t think anything of it.
The study, which has not yet been reviewed by scientists, comes as more than 9,300 people around the world have died and more than 224,000 have been confirmed to be ill. ‘
