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medpundit |
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Tuesday, April 22, 2003The death rate from severe acute respiratory syndrome has more than doubled to 5.6 percent since the epidemic was first detected in mid-March, causing deep concern among health officials. More than doubled? They've been saying for some time that the mortality rate is around 4%. Wouldn't it have to increase to over 8% to "more than double"? Well, it depends on how you define "double": When WHO, the lead agency investigating SARS, first reported daily statistics on the disease, the death rate was about 2 percent. It was 2.4 percent on March 17 and 1.8 percent on March 18. At that time, the number of cases was less than 220. The WHO first realized that there was something new going on in Asia around March 12. The data collected on March 17 were by no means complete. It's very disingenous to claim that this represents a real doubling in the death rate. The truth is, this illness hasn't been around long enough for anyone to have a good handle on its natural history. Until there's a reliable way to definitively diagnose it, we won't know for sure what the true mortality rate is. It could be lower if there are many milder cases of the disease that so far go unnoticed. For a better perspective on the mortality of SARS, see the New England Journal of Medicine's excellent graphic (scroll down past the list of articles). Mortality still remains relatively flat compared to the number of cases. posted by Sydney on 4/22/2003 08:14:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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