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Chinese Report Says Majority of Coronavirus Cases Are Mild

Fatality rate has been 2.3 percent, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention

TUESDAY, Feb. 18, 2020 (HealthDay News) — New details on nearly 45,000 cases of COVID-19 in China show that 80 percent of cases are mild and the number of new cases has been declining for most of February.

The report, released Monday by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, offers some hope that the outbreak might be abating, the Associated Press reported. Still, “it’s too early to tell if this reported decline will continue. Every scenario is still on the table,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director of the World Health Organization, said during a media briefing Monday.

Among the cases studied in the Chinese report, 14 percent developed pneumonia and 5 percent developed critical illness. The fatality rate has been 2.3 percent — 2.8 percent for men and 1.7 percent for women. Health care workers have high exposures to COVID-19, and the AP reported that another Chinese doctor on the front lines of fighting the virus has died from complications tied to the illness.

On Tuesday, the case count in mainland China reached 72,436, while the number of deaths hit 1,868, the AP reported.

AP News Article
More Information: CDC

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