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From a fivefold increase in mortality to an increase of around 60 percent. This has been shown in a similar form by repeated studies from the USA. Yan Xie from the Center for Clinical Epidemiology of the St. Louis Health Care System (US state of Missouri) and her co-authors published in November 2020 in the prestigious British Medical Journal (BMJ; doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj .m4677) and currently published in the Journal of the US Medical Association (JAMA; doi:10.1001/jama.2023.5348; April 6, 2023) studies conducted in virtually the same form. They were carried out using data from health insurance for former members of the US military (US Department of Veterans Affairs).
The first study ran between February 1, 2020 and June 17, 2020. The scientists compared the mortality in 3,641 Covid-19 patients who had been hospitalized with the information from 12,676 people who were hospitalized between 2017 and 2019 because of a severe seasonal illness had come to the hospital with influenza. The result, according to the scientists at the BMJ at the time: “Compared to seasonal influenza, Clovid-19 was associated with a higher risk of death, mechanical ventilation and a stay in the intensive care unit.” The mortality risk was 4.97 times higher, the Covid 19 patients in the hospital had to be ventilated almost two and a half times more often than influenza patients and ended up in an intensive care unit three times more often.
The team of authors finally repeated the study for the period from October 1, 2022 to January 31, 2023. This time, the course of the disease in Covid 19 patients requiring hospital admission (8,996 patients) was directly linked to that of 2,403 influenza patients compared, who also came to the hospital in winter 2022/2023. The main result: With 5.98 percent mortality from Covid-19 and 3.75 percent mortality from influenza, the difference between the two groups was significantly smaller. The death rate as a result of a SARS-CoV-2 infection with a severe course is “only” 61 percent higher than with severe “flu”.
“The death rates for patients hospitalized for Covid-19 were between 17 and 21 percent in 2020, compared to only around six percent in this (current; note) study,” the US experts noted. The frequency of deaths from influenza remained practically the same in the two scientific studies at 3.8 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively. The reasons for this development are likely to be manifold: probably the “weaker” omicron virus variants in particular, then increased vaccinations and immune protection due to Covid-19 diseases that have already been overcome and finally a learning process in medicine in the treatment of Covid-19, even in severe cases.
Source: Nachrichten
