Coronavirus: row erupts over whether Covid is deadlier than flu, as Hong Kong’s health chief accuses experts of misleading public into thinking both are similar
- Health secretary fires salvo on official blog, refuting experts who had challenged city leader’s claim the coronavirus was much deadlier than influenza
- Infectious disease specialists estimated current fatality rate for coronavirus in Hong Kong was only 0.098 per cent, close to 0.1 per cent recorded for influenza
Medical specialists earlier put the city’s coronavirus fatality rate at 0.098 per cent, close to the 0.1 per cent recorded for influenza, but on Thursday Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau took aim at what he called faulty reasoning.
“Simply comparing the Covid-19 death rate of 0.1 per cent since May this year with the average death rate of seasonal flu is making the serious mistake of selection bias,” Lo wrote on his official blog.
“It is ignoring the misfortune of the thousands of people who died from Covid-19, and misleading the public to take the pandemic lightly. If we are comparing apples to apples, Hong Kong’s influenza death rate since May is in fact zero.”
Hong Kong has recorded 9,836 deaths related to the virus since the first infections were detected in January 2020, the bulk of them during the fifth wave that began in December. Six more deaths were announced on Thursday, along with 8,187 new cases, including 164 imported ones.
Earlier in the week, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu warned against equating Covid-19 with the flu and described the epidemic situation as still “critical”.
