{"id":130,"date":"2020-10-10T23:07:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-10T23:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=130"},"modified":"2020-11-08T23:10:43","modified_gmt":"2020-11-08T23:10:43","slug":"what-will-new-treatments-be-able-to-do-to-the-death-counts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=130","title":{"rendered":"What will new treatments be able to do to the death counts?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Note: I will be traveling 10\/11 and 10\/12, so no daily updates. Happy Indigenous People\u2019s Day!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Question: <\/strong>While we know widespread distribution of a vaccine will probably take a year or more, I would expect the use of the therapeutics to increase much faster. What do we think those treatments will be able to do to the death counts?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Answer: <\/strong>As discussed in our Q&A of 9\/26<\/a>, case fatality has declined over time. This decline is due to: a) increased testing; b) cases shifting younger; c) improved biomedical treatment. We should expect that patient treatment will continue to improve over time thanks to medical\/therapeutic advances and health care worker\/system\u2019s growing experience, which means that the case fatality rate should continue to decline.* Here\u2019s yet one more reason to try to avoid the coronavirus for as long as possible! When it comes to therapeutics and medical advances, the NY Times<\/em> keeps a \u201cCoronavirus Drug and Treatment Tracker<\/a>\u201d that I find quite helpful as a snapshot of what we currently know. For example, in terms of what works, we now know that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n