Covid deaths as low as six per thousand infected, says report

FEWER than six people per thousand who get coronavirus virus now are likely to die from it.

Experts at Oxford University f ound the chances of survival have vastly improved since June, when an estimated 30 people per thousand who contracted the virus were dying.

Their research also suggests the average age of people who died from Covid-19 since the pandemic began is 82.4.

The figures appear to provide support for the ‘Great Barrington Declaration’ , which has now been signed by more than 9,000 leading scientists and doctors.

The declaration, named after the Massachusetts town where it was written, urges governments to switch from blanket, lockdown-style measures to ‘ focused protection’ for the most vulnerable.

Dr Jason Oke, a senior stati stician at Oxford, said it ‘made sense’ the age of those who died was so high.

Statisticians favour using the median average, as the Mail has used here. But the mean average numbers tell the same story, giving an average age of death from Covid19 at 80.9 years, and from all other causes at 78.7 years.

Dr Oke said: ‘One reason it has fallen is that more young people are getting infected. But I don’t think it’s the only one. It’s possible people who are getting infected are picking up lower doses of the virus, and we now have drugs that can help.’

He said the figures ‘reinforce the message we need to keep this away from the very elderly and those with underlying conditions’, but that local lockdowns ‘don’t seem to be having much i mpact on infections’.

Researchers found the average age of people who died from Covid-19 in England and Wales since the pandemic began is 82.4. That figure – computed f rom Office of National Statistics data – is higher than the average age reached by people recorded as dying from all other causes, which was 81.5.

The life expectancy for people born now in England and Wales is 79 for men and 83 for women. Life expectancy in

Scotland is 77 for men and 81 for women.

The infection fatality rate (IFR) calculated by the team at Oxford’s Centre for Evidence Based Medicine is not based on the daily test results, which are plagued by problems including delays and lost data, but on ONS models for the total number of infections in society at any given time.

These data show that since early summer, when it reached 3.3 per cent, there has been a big fall in the IFR. However, since mid-August, when the number of infections began to rise, it has levelled out, at a little over 0.5 per cent.

The figures for the average age of death also show 40 per cent of those who die from Covid are over 85, and a further 33 per cent are between 75 and 84. Barely 1 per cent of those who die are under 44.

‘Lower doses of the virus’