  Second-order susceptibilities $\chi^{11}_{ij}$ of baryon, electric, and
strangeness, $B$, $Q$, and $S$, charges, are calculated in the Chiral Mean
Field (CMF) model and compared to available lattice QCD data. The
susceptibilities are sensitive to the short range repulsive interactions
between different hadron species, especially to the hardcore repulsion of
hyperons. Decreasing the hyperons size, as compared to the size of the
non-strange baryons, does improve significantly the agreement of the CMF model
results with the Lattice QCD data. The electric charge-dependent
susceptibilities are sensitive to the short range repulsive volume of mesons.
The comparison with lattice QCD data suggests that strange baryons, non-strange
mesons and strange mesons have significantly smaller excluded volumes than
non-strange baryons. The CMF model with these modified hadron volumes allows
for a mainly hadronic description of the QCD susceptibilities significantly
above the chiral pseudo-critical temperature. This improved CMF model which is
based on the lattice QCD data, has been used to study the properties of both
cold QCD matter and neutron star matter. The phase structure in both cases is
essentially unchanged, i.e. a chiral first-order phase transition occurs at low
temperatures ($T_{\rm CP}\approx 17$ MeV), and hyperons survive deconfinement
to higher densities than non-strange hadrons. The neutron star maximal mass
remains close to 2.1$M_\odot$ and the mass-radius diagram is only modified
slightly due to the appearance of hyperons and is in agreement with
astrophysical observations.
