While the COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus may be less deadly than its predecessors, it seems that its fatality rate is much higher than that of the various influenza viruses that humanity has faced.
Let’s repeat it again: no, COVID-19 coronavirus is not a “flu.” According to the latest statistics, it would be more than an understatement to say so. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, leader of the World Health Organization (WHO), wanted to make it known recently to urge governments around the world to relax their measures to contain and limit the spread of the disease “Slowly and with control”. Indeed, given the evolution of the current viral pneumonia pandemic, COVID-19 could prove to be more fatal than the flu. “We know the virus is spreading quickly and we know it is deadly, said WHO. It would be ten times more deadly than the virus responsible for the 2009 influenza pandemic. ”
COVID-19 is said to have killed at least more than 127,500 people worldwide since its appearance in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of December 2019 – that is, there are less than four months. In March-April 2009, a influenza A virus, H1N1 strain (the same as that of the “Spanish flu”), which was particularly virulent, appeared in Mexico. In June 2010, while the pandemic that caused it was contained, WHO officially recorded more than 18,000 deaths. Two years later, the scientific and medical journal The Lancet revised this figure upwards by estimating a number of victims more around 280,000 in reality. The 2009 pandemic influenza mortality rate has since been estimated to be between 0.03% and 0.3%. Indeed, given the circumstances (access to health, hygiene, control measures, etc.) and the target populations (elderly, young adults, etc.), it is sometimes very difficult to establish a fatality rate. specific. Seasonal flu, also of the H1N1 strain, is responsible for the deaths of 250,000 to 500,000 people worldwide each year, with an average death rate of 0.1%. The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, at the origin of the disease of COVID-19, as for him, would cause the death of approximately 2 to 3% of the patients. This rate remains lower compared to previous coronaviruses of the genus, which caused the SARS epidemics in 2002-2004, estimated at 10%, and MERS-CoV in 2012 in the Middle East, still estimated at 30%. In conclusion, the mortality rate currently estimated for COVID-19 would be closer to that of spanish flu, which caused a pandemic after the First World War, 2.5%.
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