UPMC doctor says its hospitals will now shift back to normal, COVID-19 having proved to be less deadly than feared, with a death rate of 0.25% in Allegheny County
Mark Crispin Miller
UPMC doctor argues COVID-19 not as deadly as feared, says its hospitals will shift back to normal
Dr. Donald Yealy of UPMC in Pittsburgh, Pa. speaks to reporters during an online briefing on April 30, 2020
A UPMC doctor on Thursday made a case the death rate for people infected with the new coronavirus may be as low as 0.25% — far lower than the mortality rates of 2-4% or even higher cited in the early days of the pandemic.
Dr. Donald Yealy based it partly on studies of levels of coronavirus antibodies detected in people in New York and California, and partly on COVID-19 deaths in the Pittsburgh region. The studies found that 5-20% of people had been exposed to the coronavirus, with many noticing only mild illness or none at all, he said.
“We’ve learned that way more people, far, far more people have actually been exposed to the infection without any knowledge of it. That makes the overall death rate much lower,” said Yealy, who is UPMC’s chair of emergency medicine. “Many people just didn’t feel sick at all and recovered without difficulty.”
Yealy went on to offer a hypothetical scenario of 3% of Allegheny County residents being exposed — a conservative number compared to the findings of the New York and California studies.
That would mean about 36,000 people in Allegheny have been exposed to the coronavirus. With 94 COVID-19 deaths in the county as of Thursday, it would mean 0.25 percent of people exposed to the coronavirus had died, he said.
“There is a big difference between 0.25% mortality and 7%,” Yealy said.
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