US

Coronavirus Mortality Rate Likely Overstated, But Is Still Far More Deadly Than Flu, Top Expert Tells Lawmakers

(Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Andrew Kerr Investigative Reporter
Font Size:

One of the nation’s top experts on infectious diseases told lawmakers Wednesday that the estimated mortality rate for novel coronavirus is likely vastly overstated but stressed that the disease still poses a “serious risk” and is far more deadly than the common flu.

John Hopkins University reported that as of Wednesday there are over 121,000 confirmed global coronavirus infections and a death toll of over 4,300, producing a mortality rate of 3.5% of all known cases.

But there are likely a significant amount of unreported cases from people exhibiting only mild symptoms, and once those are accounted for the mortality rate is likely to drop precipitously, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said at a House Oversight hearing Wednesday.

“I think if you count all the cases of minimally symptomatic or asymptomatic infection that probably brings the mortality rate somewhere around 1%,” Fauci told lawmakers.

But Fauci warned that even with a 1% mortality rate, coronavirus, or COVID-19, is still ten times more lethal than the common flu.

“This is a really serious problem that we have to take seriously,” he said. “The flu has a mortality rate of 0.1%. This has a mortality rate of ten times that. And that’s the reason why I want to emphasize that we have to stay ahead of the game in preventing this.”

Fauci told lawmakers that the American death toll from coronavirus will rise, but the amount of carnage it will create is “totally dependent upon how we respond to it.” (RELATED: Fauci On Coronavirus In US: ‘It’s Going To Get Worse’)

“If we are complacent and don’t do really aggressive containment and mitigation the number could go way up and be involved in many, many millions,” he said.

“If we contain, we can flatten it,” Fauci said, adding that measures the government can take to proactively combat the virus include limiting “the influx of people who are infected coming from the outside, and the ability to contain and mitigate within our own country,” he said.

Countries that have deployed aggressive coronavirus testing procedures generally have a lower known mortality rate, according to a Business Insider report.

South Korea, for example, had conducted 3,692 tests per million citizens as of Sunday. The country has 7,755 known infections and 60 deaths, resulting in a known mortality rate of about 0.8%.

By contrast, the United States has seen widespread delays in fully deploying coronavirus testing kits nationwide, resulting in just about five coronavirus tests conducted per million citizens as of Sunday, a rate 700 times less than South Korea, according to Business Insider.

Previous pandemics have seen their initial mortality rates drop after the full scope of the outbreak was taken into consideration, such as the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic.

In November 2009, amid the global outbreak swine flu, the World Health Organization reported a 1.3% mortality rate for the disease.

Swine flu landed at a mortality rate of 0.02% once all cases mild and severe were accounted for. The disease ultimately infected between 700 million and 1.4 billion people worldwide.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel