Studies Point To Big Drop In COVID-19 Death Rates

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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.

COVID-19 mortality rates are going down, according to studies of two large hospital systems, partly thanks to improvements in treatment. Here, clinicians care for a patient in July at an El Centro, Calif., hospital.COVID-19 mortality rates are going down, according to studies of two large hospital systems, partly thanks to improvements in treatment. Here, clinicians care for a patient in July at an El Centro, Calif., hospital.

The death rate"is still higher than many infectious diseases, including the flu," Horwitz says. And those who recover can suffer complications for months or even longer."It still has the potential to be very harmful in terms of long-term consequences for many people."Studying changes in death rate is tricky because although the overall U.S. death rate for COVID-19 seems to be dropping, the drop coincides with a change in whom the disease is sickening.

To find out, Horwitz and her colleagues looked at more than 5,000 hospitalizations in the NYU Langone Health system between March and August. They adjusted for factors including age and other diseases, such as diabetes, to rule out the possibility that the numbers had dropped only because younger, healthier people were getting diagnosed. They found that death rates dropped for all groups, even older patients by 18 percentage points on average.

Doctors around the country say that they're doing a lot of things differently in the fight against COVID-19 and that treatment is improving."In March and April, you got put on a breathing machine, and we asked your family if they wanted to enroll you into some different trials we were participating in, and we hoped for the best," says, a critical care pulmonologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

"We know that when people are getting standardized treatment, it makes it much easier to deal with the complications that occur because you already have protocols in place," Adalja says."And that's definitely what's happened in many hospitals around the country."

 

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