Deadlier COVID-19, Causes More Serious Illness Than Flu – Study

Former Director General of the Department of Health Professor Yoram Lass stunned the public when he said COVID-19 “is the flu with excellent public relations” in March 2020 and expressed his objections to government-imposed health regulations to reduce the rate of infection. Now it appears researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston have discovered that Lass was wrong, the virus being six times more deadly than the flu.

The study compared 1052 influenza patients and 582 patients with COVID-19 and found that more people on average needed hospital care if they were infected with the novel coronavirus (582) compared to those with the influenza (210). About 30% of people with COVID-19 needed mechanical ventilation, while only 8% of people with the flu needed such treatment. The death toll among those suffering from the new coronavirus was much higher – 20% – compared to a death rate of 3% suffered by those infected with the flu.

Additionally, patients with COVID-19, on average, were younger than those with influenza and when they needed mechanical ventilation, they tended to stay in care longer – a median of two weeks. compared to three days, news-medical.net reported Friday. COVID-19 patients have also reported fewer pre-existing conditions that would require such an intense form of intervention.

Almost all of the deaths from COVID-19, 98%, were a direct or indirect result of the novel coronavirus, wrote Dr Michael Donnino, one of the authors of the article. He stressed that this means people are dying from COVID-19, not while they have it. This is crucial because, online and during protests, many people have argued that the death rate is allegedly “fabricated” and that hospitals are encouraged to report false data. from a September report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which indicated that 6% of COVID-19-related deaths indicated that COVID-19 was the direct and sole cause, the science portal Midaat pointed out. The study authors also noted that, without the measures of social distancing and mask wearing, death rates from COVID-19 would have been much higher than their study showed.

The study was originally published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.