COVID-19 results in a spectrum of illness ranging from possible asymptomatic carriage, common cold to severe cases requiring hospital admission. In a small minority of cases, COVID-19 can be fatal.

The early epidemiological characteristics published should be interpreted with caution. Patients with milder disease would be less likely to seek medical attention and therefore may not be included in the statistics.

Epidemiological reports from patients who received medical attention in China suggest the following breakdown of COVID-19 cases:

• 1% have no symptoms
• 81% have mild symptoms like the common cold
• 14% have severe symptoms that cause them to miss work and/or attend hospital
• 5% have severe symptoms, often requiring ICU admission (including a fatality rate of about 2.3%)

(Wu & McGoogan, 2020).

There were no reports of deaths in people aged nine years or younger and of the 1716 health care workers diagnosed who may be presumed to be younger with less co-morbidities there were five deaths reported giving a fatality rate 0.003%, which may be more representative to athletes and coaches (Wu & McGoogan, 2020).