Addendum to: Nature Medicine https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0822-7; published online 19 March 2020
On 17 April 2020, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission revised the official COVID-19 death counts in Wuhan up by 1,290 to 3,869. No new information on the age distribution of COVID-19 deaths in China has been published since February 2020. In light of the changes in the number of fatalities in Wuhan, we are providing a revised estimate of clinical severity as follows, assuming that the age distribution of COVID-19 deaths remains the same as before.
We assumed that the abovementioned revision of the total number of COVID-19 deaths in Wuhan would increase the number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths during our study period by the same proportion; i.e., from 2,169 to 2,169 × 3,869 / (3,869 – 1,290) = 3,254. The resulting age-specific symptomatic case-fatality risks (sCFRs) are shown in Fig. 1 in this Addendum. The overall sCFR would increase to 2.2% (95% credible interval, 1.4–3.2%), 2.0% (1.2–3.4%) or 1.8% (1.0–2.8%) if the probability of developing symptoms after infection (Psym) was 0.5, 0.75 or 0.95, respectively. If Psym = 0.5, the sCFRs are 0.5% (0.2–1.0%), 0.8% (0.5–1.2%) and 3.9% (2.6–5.9%) for those <30 years of age, 30–59 years of age and >59 years of age, respectively.
We will update our estimates again as and when new and more detailed information, including the total number and age distribution of COVID-19 deaths, are made available.
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Wu, J.T., Leung, K., Bushman, M. et al. Addendum: Estimating clinical severity of COVID-19 from the transmission dynamics in Wuhan, China. Nat Med 26, 1149–1150 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0920-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0920-6
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