By- Dr.S.Ramasamy
 
WTN- Newspapers carry a huge responsibility during the pandemic like COVID -19, where the nation is in Lockdown and people struggling to come back to normalcy. At most, care should be taken when reporting medical news without exaggerating the findings to the level of creating panic. Recently an article was published in Economic times claiming " The Risk of a Fatal outcome from Covid-19 is up to 50% higher in people with diabetes: Dr. V.Mohan - ET HealthWorld. 

This article has given an alarming impression that if you are a diabetic patient, your risk of dying if you contract COVID-19 is as high as 50% when compared to people with no diabetes. This news seems to be a pure medical finding published for patients' safety.  However, the author of the article fails to notify that this is indeed a calculated relative risk; it doesn't accurately reflect the absolute risk of diabetic patients. Statistical reporting of published medical research is very complex; sometimes, the risk is so much amplified to make the patients feel threatened. There is a very significant difference between reporting the absolute risk and relative risk.  The real absolute risk of COVID 19 diabetic patient fatality rate when compared to patients without diabetes is only around 5% as per the published data. Then how did the author arrived at the number 50% fatality rate?  

To understand the difference between reporting absolute risk and relative risk, let's take a current example to explain why this reporting is biased. In India, 45 lakhs people traveled through the train during March-May 2019, and let's assume two persons died due to illness while traveling. Now during the COVID -19 period of March-May 2020, newspaper articles have recorded seven patients who have died during the train journey. Now this incidence can be reported in two ways. 

When compared to the previous year, five more people died, while fetching 45 lakhs people. So the calculated Absolute risk of the patient dying while traveling during COVID 19 is 0.00015%. The increased risk while comparing to the previous year is 0.00010%. Now, this reporting can never be sensational news.

So, let's try the same finding in relative risk, similar to reported by the specialist in the field of diabetes. When calculated the relative risk, the same conclusion can be presented as " Travelling in Train during COVID-19 increases your risk of death to 227%. This intentionally biased reporting can certainly stop people traveling by train for another year.  

The data about this announcement of the Diabetes fatality rate with COVID-19 came from the study by the National Health Survey (NHS) England and the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. The Chinese research shows in 72,314 COVID patients, the death rate is 7.3% for diabetes and 2.3 % for the non-diabetic. So the absolute risk is 5% more for people with diabetes. Both the study points out other associated factors like obesity, advanced age, stroke, and heart failure, also contribute to the cause for increase death among people with diabetes. So patients with diabetics should be more cautious during COVID-19 but not to get panic reading the article cited.- Window To News

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