Analysis of Death Risk of COVID-19 under Incomplete Information1

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak was first reported in the city of Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, in December 2019. Experts have attributed the outbreak to a novel coronavirus that has since spread across China and abroad with confirmed cases exceeding 234,000 globally, death toll of coronavirus tops 11,000 [1], on March 21, 2020. The disease has been named “coronavirus disease 2019” (abbreviated “COVID-19”). When the disease started to spread in China, authorities reacted with historically unprecedented quarantines of cities. On February 27, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) raised the risk assessment of COVID-19 from “high” to “very high” at global level. However, the concept of the risk of COVID-19 is still unclear today, and risk communication is not smooth. Before the outbreak, information about the disease was incomplete and traditional risk analysis tools were unable to provide any support. Holding the hope that the virus does not pass from human to human, meanwhile some political considerations, people lost the opportunity to control the source of infection early, causing serious losses. If a more reliable risk analysis was carried out before and at the beginning of the outbreak, and if a strengthen crisis response was took immediately, the situation will certainly be much better. It is the same for almost all disasters, the story after the events is easy to tell, but the risk analysis before the events is not easy. One reason is that the information available for risk analysis before and at the beginning of the outbreak is incomplete.