Case fatality rate

Also called: CFR · Topic: Human Capital: Education, Health and Demographic Dividend · NCERT: Beyond NCERT

Meaning

Case fatality rate (CFR) is the share of people diagnosed with a disease who die from it. It tells us how deadly a disease is for the people who catch it. Health planners use it to judge how serious an outbreak is and how much care, staff and money it needs.

CFR (%) = (Deaths from the disease ÷ Confirmed cases of the disease) × 100, for the same period.

Two cautions apply. During an ongoing outbreak, some patients are still sick, so the final CFR may change. Also, mild cases that are never tested do not get counted, so the CFR can look higher than it really is.

Example

Suppose a district records 2,000 confirmed cases of a disease in one year, and 100 of these patients die. The CFR is (100 ÷ 2,000) × 100 = 5%. In other words, 1 in every 20 people diagnosed died.

Don't confuse with

• Mortality rate (crude death rate): this counts deaths against the whole population, usually per 1,000 people, not just against those who fell ill. For example, India's crude death rate was 6.0 per 1,000 in 2018-22. A disease can have a high CFR but a low mortality rate if very few people catch it.
• Infection rate: this measures how many people get a disease. CFR measures how many of the people who got it die.

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• Human Capital: Education, Health and Demographic Dividend