Till this moment, Scientists can’t tell how deadly the new virus that’s spreading around the globe really is — with different fatality rate even within China.
Until the past week, most people diagnosed outside of China had become infected while traveling there.
People who travel generally are healthier and thus may be better able to recover, noted Johns Hopkins University outbreak specialist Lauren Sauer.
Countries began screening returning travelers, spotting infections far earlier in places where the medical system wasn’t already strained.
That’s now changing, with clusters of cases in Japan, Italy and Iran, and the death toll outside of China growing.
Flu is a different virus family, and some strains are deadlier than others. On average, the death rate from seasonal flu is about 0.1%.
That’s far lower than what has been calculated so far for COVID-19. But millions of people get the flu every year around the world, leading to an annual death toll in the hundreds of thousands.
Older people, especially those with chronic illnesses such as heart or lung diseases, are more at risk.
In China, 80% of patients are mildly ill when the virus is detected, compared with 13% who already are severely ill. While the sickest to start with are at highest risk of death, some of the mildly ill face the same threat — for unknown reasons.
On average, however, WHO says people with mild cases recover in about two weeks, while those who are sicker can take anywhere from three to six weeks.
