Health experts reassuring about Covid-19 pandemic

According to experts, since 1967 the world has experienced nine epidemics and pandemics that varied in severity and impact. 

As Rashid A. Chotani, M.D., a professor of epidemiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, claimed, while Covid-19 is causing disease in multiple countries, it has a very low “crude fatality rate”– approximately 3.52 percent – compared to previous outbreaks.

Crude fatality rate (CFR) is based on some math that involves factoring in the total cases and total deaths, which means Covid-19’s already low CFR will continue to drop as more cases are confirmed.

The most serious epidemic in these terms was Marburg virus first detected in 1967 in the German city of Marburg, as well as Frankfurt, Germany and Belgrade, Serbia. Its CFR reached as high as 80 percent. Many victims claimed as well Nipha (CFR of 77.6 percent), Hendra (57 percent), bird flu (52.8 percent) and Ebola (40 percent).

(WBJ)