What explains the decline in COVID deaths despite the rising number of cases?
Jason Shafrin
Senior Managing Director, Center for Healthcare Economics & Policy at FTI Consulting; Adjunct Professor, University of Southern California
Take a look at these two graphs. The first gives the number of new COVID-19 cases from John Hopkins University. It is a scary graph.
The second graph is the number of COVID deaths from IHME. Not nearly as bad.
CDC reported death numbers are similar. In fact, the number of deaths in recent weeks is no different from normal according to the CDC.
One reason for rising cases is that we are doing more testing. Thus, we are catching more cases. People who are hospitalized with critical illness are more likely to be tested and thus as we expand the number of tests, we are now catching more of the less severe cases with the additional testing.
However, testing does not explain everything. We see that as cases are rising, so is the number of hospitalizations. Thus, this is not just a testing story. Real--not just detected--cases are rising.
Most likely, the existence of more effective treatments (e.g., remdesivir and dexamethasone) and physicians gaining experience treating the disease is responsible. Among hospitalized individuals, death rates have been falling dramatically in recent weeks.
There is much still to be learned about the causes of these divergent trends and much more research is needed.
Originally posted at Healthcare Economist.
Also, deaths lag infections, so we might still see an increase in the coming weeks given the spike in cases.
I also think the average age of those infected has decreased, which decreases likelihood of dying.
Jason this is so clear and I have been trying to “see” what the patterns are myself! Thank you!
Fractional Chief Medical Officer|Strategic BioPharma Consultant and Advisor|Board Member
4 年It could also reflect patients getting the virus that are lower risk for death
Biopharma Strategist | Neuroscientist | Immunologist | Professor | Trainer
4 年D614G: thats the mutation in the spike protein that is much more prevalent in american/european cases. It is more infectious but less severe than the original version. Though the data on severity is shotty. The death rate will normalize from about 4 weeks from now, infection fatality rate will likely be in the 3-5%. Case fatality rate will likely be around 0.3 - O.9%. Testing is a very minor contributor to increased cases. Thats due to virulence. Sars Cov 2 can easily infect 30-50% of a population, depending on public health measures. Hospitalized rate is lower now but will increase linearly with the number of cases.