Claims About COVID Survival Rates Are Missing Context
The Claim
The survival rate for COVID-19 among most age groups is 99%.
News posted on
Emerging story
This past week, social media users have been posting claims that the survival rate for COVID-19 is 99%. It’s unclear who posted the claim first, but the information seems to be taken out of context from data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Misbar’s Analysis
The social media posts that say the survival rate is 99% for most age groups are misusing CDC data that’s meant to model potential scenarios, rather than determine the actual survival rate. The data was originally created to aid public health officials with mathematical modeling, the document says.
There have been about 36,610,000 confirmed cases in the United States, according to JHU data. Of that, more than 98% of individuals infected with the virus have survived. As experts say that COVID-19 death tolls are actually higher than reported, this number is likely inaccurate.
There is no information offering concrete, numerical survival rates for the coronavirus pandemic. This might be because experts cannot yet be sure of the death toll of the coronavirus.
One study, for example, says the death toll in the United States as of May might be closer to 900,000 people. The current US death toll sits at a little over 621,000 people, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. And the World Health Organization estimated that the real COVID-19 death toll might be anywhere between two to three times higher than reported.
“We are likely facing a significant undercount of total deaths directly and indirectly attributed to COVID-19,” the WHO said in May.
Scientists and experts believe we don’t know the true death toll because official figures only account for known COVID-19 cases. Around the world — and in the United States — officials believe there are numerous unreported cases and deaths.
