U.S. President Donald Trump has dismissed the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Covid-19 global mortality rate of 3.4 per cent, The Guardian reported.
Speaking to Fox News host Sean Hannity on Mar. 4, Trump stated: "I think the 3.4 per cent is really a false number."
Instead, the figure is likely to be below 1 per cent, he speculated.
There are people who are only mildly infected
In explaining why this was the case, Trump said that there were many people with a mild infection who had also recovered.
As per Trump:
"Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot people will have this and it's very mild. They'll get better very rapidly. They don't even see a doctor. They don't even call a doctor."
He further stated that such people should not be classified as a Covid-19 case:
"You never hear about those people. So you can't put them down in the category of the overall population in terms of this corona flu and — or virus. So you just can't do that."
Deaths and statistics
Trump then elaborated:
"When you do have a death — like you had in the state of Washington, like you had one in California, believe you had one in New York — you know, all of a sudden, it seems like three or four per cent, which is a very high number, as opposed to a fraction of one per cent."
Politico further reported that while 11 deaths have been reported in New York, no deaths have been reported in the state thus far.
In reiterating his point about mild cases, Trump said:
"But again, they don't know about the easy cases because the easy cases don't go to the hospital. They don't report to doctors or the hospital, in many cases. So I think that that number is very high. I think the number, personally, I would say the number is way under 1 percent."
There are people that "get better" by going to work
Trump also stated that there were people who got better by going to work.
"So if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work but they get better."
Politico highlighted that it was a point he defended on Mar. 5, when he insisted that he did not say people who are feeling sick should go to work.
How does the mortality rate for Covid-19 and the flu compare?
The Guardian reported that prior to WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announcing on Mar. 3 that the global Covid-19 mortality rate was 3.4 per cent, it was estimated to be 2 per cent.
In comparison, the mortality rate for seasonal influenza is 0.1 per cent while the figure stands at between 2 per cent and 3 per cent for the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-1919.
Top image collage from Wikipedia and Donald J. Trump Facebook