GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - Death Rate From Virus More Than Doubles

Some people here were wondering why the death rate was higher.. Some explanation :

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/22/sc...l/22INFE.html?

The 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.

Although the overall death rate, according to World Health Organization statistics, has hovered around 4 percent in the last three weeks, it has varied widely among the 26 countries, plus Hong Kong, with cases of the disease, known as SARS.

When W.H.O., which is the lead agency investigating SARS, first reported daily statistics, the death rate was about 2 percent. It was 2.4 percent on March 17 and 1.8 percent on March 18. The known number of cases then was fewer than 220.

But as the number of cases has increased ? to 3,861 yesterday ? the death rate has also steadily risen, leaving health officials worried. Lacking a precise explanation for the rise, health officials have generated a number of theories. In outbreaks of other new infections, the death rate has usually fallen with time.

"It's worrying, and we hope it is not an indication of a continuing trend," said Dr. Klaus Stöhr, scientific director of the W.H.O.'s SARS investigation.

Although health officials have calculated a death rate from SARS, it is not final, in part because researchers have not developed diagnostic tests to determine who definitely has the disease.

The current 5.6 percent rate is much higher than that for the influenza pandemic of 1918-19, which was less than 1 percent, Dr. Stöhr said. But influenza then killed 20 million to 40 million people worldwide because it spread so quickly.

One theory for the rising SARS death rate is that the initial cases involved health care workers who were healthy 20-to-45-year-old adults and who had better access to health care than others. Then, as the infected health workers unintentionally spread the disease to family members and friends, and they, in turn, to others, SARS has infected an increasing number of older people with heart disease, diabetes and other chronic ailments.

A second theory is that many of the SARS deaths occurred among patients who became ill weeks ago but who died only recently, after extended hospital stays.

Still another, and more disputed, theory is that the SARS virus, a newly discovered member of the coronavirus family, has become more virulent as it infected new generations of cases. While some doctors in Asia have advanced this theory, Dr. Stöhr said he was doubtful because most viruses establish a balance between killing a large percentage of their victims and allowing people to survive so the virus can continue to be transmitted.

"There's a lot of anecdotal information and speculation, but no solid statistical studies," Dr. Stöhr said in a telephone interview from his office in Geneva, "so it is far too early to come up with any conclusions."

The W.H.O. has sent teams of epidemiologists and other experts to affected countries to help with immediate problems in controlling the epidemic. But, Dr. Stöhr said, setting up studies to answer the many questions that have arisen over the death rate and other issues takes time, staff members and money.

W.H.O., he said, is short on staff and money to conduct all the desired studies, and "so far we don't have the data collected properly."

The organization, a United Nations specialized agency, has drawn praise for quickly recognizing the epidemic and creating a network of laboratories that last week said it had found conclusive evidence that the new coronavirus caused SARS.

"We have moved along well with the laboratory studies," Dr. Stöhr said, "but now we have to be equally strong with our epidemiology because disease control comes from epidemiologic analysis, and what we need now are better epidemiological studies."

The W.H.O. is about to link the laboratory and epidemiological data, which will help answer many questions about the epidemic. But, Dr. Stöhr said, "we're not 100 percent coordinated yet."

The organization is also awaiting the findings from a study by British scientists involving more than 1,000 of Hong Kong's 1,400 reported cases. The findings could provide clues as to why most people recover from SARS and a relatively few die from it.

The death rate varies among countries for a number of reasons. One is that most of the 26 countries with SARS have reported five or fewer cases, numbers too small to be statistically meaningful. In the 16 countries with five or fewer cases, there has been only one death among them. That occurred in the Philippines, which has had only two cases ? a death rate of 50 percent.

In Hong Kong, where 94 of the 1,402 SARS cases have been fatal, the death rate is 6.7 percent. Elsewhere in China, which has reported 1,959 cases, including 86 deaths, the fatality rate is 4.4 percent. In Singapore, there have been 178 cases, with 16 deaths, for a 9 percent death rate.

While the quality of health care is a factor in the death rate, it does not explain such contrasts as Vietnam (63 cases including 5 deaths, for a 7.9 percent death rate) and Canada (132 cases including 12 deaths, for a 9.1 percent rate).