- Nov 10, 2019
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In a report from NPR, quoting a study of a single health system, to be published in next week in Journal of Hospital Medicine, the death rate for hospitalized Covid-19 patient has seen a significant reduction in death rate.
Studies Point To Big Drop In COVID-19 Death Rates
Two new peer-reviewed studies are showing a sharp drop in mortality among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The drop is seen in all groups, including older patients and those with underlying conditions, suggesting that physicians are getting better at helping patients survive their illness.
"We find that the death rate has gone down substantially," says Leora Horwitz, a doctor who studies population health at New York University's Grossman School of Medicine and an author on one of the studies, which looked at thousands of patients from March to August.
The study, which was of a single health system, finds that mortality has dropped among hospitalized patients by 18 percentage points since the pandemic began. Patients in the study had a 25.6% chance of dying at the start of the pandemic; they now have a 7.6% chance.
Their analysis took into account that the people that are getting sick now are significantly younger and with less pre-existing conditions than the average seen closer to the beginning of the pandemic. They were trying to determine whether the decrease was due to the nature of the patient or improvements in treatment.
It is an interesting article, especially coming into the fall season with cooler weather and while observing a marked rise in the number of cases being report, virtually across the nation and including states that have majorly been spare so far.
Studies Point To Big Drop In COVID-19 Death Rates
Two new peer-reviewed studies are showing a sharp drop in mortality among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The drop is seen in all groups, including older patients and those with underlying conditions, suggesting that physicians are getting better at helping patients survive their illness.
"We find that the death rate has gone down substantially," says Leora Horwitz, a doctor who studies population health at New York University's Grossman School of Medicine and an author on one of the studies, which looked at thousands of patients from March to August.
The study, which was of a single health system, finds that mortality has dropped among hospitalized patients by 18 percentage points since the pandemic began. Patients in the study had a 25.6% chance of dying at the start of the pandemic; they now have a 7.6% chance.
Their analysis took into account that the people that are getting sick now are significantly younger and with less pre-existing conditions than the average seen closer to the beginning of the pandemic. They were trying to determine whether the decrease was due to the nature of the patient or improvements in treatment.
It is an interesting article, especially coming into the fall season with cooler weather and while observing a marked rise in the number of cases being report, virtually across the nation and including states that have majorly been spare so far.
Studies Point To Big Drop In COVID-19 Death Rates
More hospitalized patients are surviving than early in the pandemic. Improved treatments make a big difference, but so does flattening the curve to keep hospitals from overfilling, researchers say.
www.npr.org