It is now abundantly clear that COVID-19 is not "just the flu" as Italy grapples to contain the virus. The country has taken surpassed the death toll of China since it recorded 5,476 deaths with a fatality rate of 8.3 percent. China has first shown a fatality rate of 2 to 3.4 percent, but a new study shows that the rate is lower than previously known, EDNews reports citing News Medical Life Sciences.
The study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, says that the death rate in Wuhan City, where the coronavirus emerged, is around 1.4 percent. The new estimate is based on the latest available data on Feb. 29.
Across the globe, there are now 331,373 confirmed cases of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), with 140,450 deaths, as reported by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). Many countries and healthcare systems are struggling due to the lack of testing kits, making disease confirmation harder and longer.
