COVID-19 patients were more likely to die than flu patients this past flu season: study – CTV
April 7, 2023
According to new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, people hospitalized with COVID-19 this past flu season were more likely to die than people hospitalized with influenza, especially if they were unvaccinated against the coronavirus.
The study was conducted by researchers Yan Xie, Taeyoung Choi and Ziyad Al-Aly, who all work for the VA St. Louis Health Care System’s Clinical Epidemiology Center, and funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The findings, published on Thursday, were based on data from 11,399 predominantly older male veterans who were hospitalized with COVID-19 or influenza between Oct. 1, 2022, and Jan. 31, 2023.
Xie, Choi and Al-Aly found there were 538 deaths among 8,996 patients hospitalized for COVID-19, and 76 deaths among 2,403 patients hospitalized for influenza. In other words, 5.98 per cent of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 died within 30 days, versus 3.16 per cent of influenza patients. During the study period, the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 was between two and three times higher than the number of patients hospitalized for influenza.
