What percentage of people who are infected with Covid-19 will go on to die of the disease? The dramatic response to the pandemic on the part of almost all governments around the world has been based on the idea that Covid-19 is a far more lethal disease than seasonal flu, which is often quoted as having an infection fatality rate (IFR) of 0.1 per cent. The World Health Organisation (WHO) is often quoted as claiming that Covid-19 has an IFR of 3.2 per cent — a claim that goes back to a press conference in early March when it, in fact, said that the case fatality rate (CFR) at that stage was 3.2 per cent.
The CFR is the division of known deaths by known cases — the denominator omitting the many cases that have not been confirmed by diagnosis. In a disease where large numbers of people are asymptomatic, the case fatality rate is bound to differ widely from the infection fatality rate.
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