Month: September 2020

Global deaths from Covid-19 have reached 1 million, but experts are still struggling to figure out a crucial metric in the pandemic: the fatality rate - the percentage of people infected with the pathogen who die. Here is a look at issues surrounding better understanding the Covid-19 death rate. How is a death rate calculated?A true mortality rate would compare deaths against the total number of infections, a denominator that remains unknown because the full scope of asymptomatic cases is difficult to measure. Many people who become infected simply do not experience symptoms. Scientists have said the total number of infections is exponentially higher than the current number of confirmed cases, now at 33 million globally. Many experts believe the coronavirus likely kills 0.5% to 1% o...

Less than nine months after a 61-year-old man died of a mysterious disease in sprawling Wuhan, China, the global death toll has surpassed 1 million. The New York Times, in reporting the death back in January, noted that the virus had "put the region on alert, but there is no evidence that it can spread among humans." In the U.S., the politics of pandemic continues an unrelenting churn. House Democrats unveiled a doomed, $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief aid package. Republicans, who control the Senate, are holding out for a slimmed-down – and cheaper – bill. Crowds of partiers gathered once again in Tallahassee, home of Florida State University, this weekend. Gov. Ron DeSantis has dropped the state's COVID-19 restrictions and even has encouraged college kids to party. No further urging nee...

(Reuters) - Global deaths from COVID-19 have reached 1 million, but experts are still struggling to figure out a crucial metric in the pandemic: the fatality rate - the percentage of people infected with the pathogen who die. Here is a look at issues surrounding better understanding the COVID-19 death rate. How is a death rate calculated? A true mortality rate would compare deaths against the total number of infections, a denominator that remains unknown because the full scope of asymptomatic cases is difficult to measure. Many people who become infected simply do not experience symptoms. Scientists have said the total number of infections is exponentially higher than the current number of confirmed cases, now at 33 million globally. Many experts believe the coronavirus likely kills 0.5...

Joginder Chaudhary was his parents’ greatest pride, raised with the little they earned farming a half-acre plot in central India to become the first doctor from their village.For the coronavirus, though, he was just one more in a million.After the virus killed the 27-year-old Chaudhary in late July, his mother wept inconsolably. With her son gone, Premlata Chaudhary said, how could she go on living? Three weeks later, on Aug. 18, the virus took her life, too — yet another number in an unrelenting march toward a woeful milestone.Now, 8 1/2 months after an infection doctors had never seen before claimed its first victims in China, the pandemic's confirmed death toll eclipsed 1 million Tuesday, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.That is partly due to the virus’s quickening...