Real estimates of mortality following COVID-19 infection
David Baud
Xiaolong Qi
Karin Nielsen-Saines
Didier Musso
Léo Pomar
Guillaume Favre
Published:March 12, 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30195-X
As of March 1, 2020, 79?968 patients in China and 7169 outside of China had tested positive for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).1 Among Chinese patients, 2873 deaths had occurred, equivalent to a mortality rate of 3·6% (95% CI 3·5–3·7), while 104 deaths from COVID-19 had been reported outside of China (1·5% [1·2–1·7]). However, these mortality rate estimates are based on the number of deaths relative to the number of confirmed cases of infection, which is not representative of the actual death rate; patients who die on any given day were infected much earlier, and thus the denominator of the mortality rate should be the total number of patients infected at the same time as those who died.