February 17, 2023 – A recent study shows that COVID-19 stays more deadly than the flu in severe cases that require hospitalization.
Swiss researchers found that folks hospitalized for omicron COVID-19 infection were 54 percent more prone to die than people hospitalized for the flu.
The study's findings further challenge previous assumptions from early within the pandemic that influenza was the more dangerous of the 2 respiratory viruses. The researchers noted that the lethality of COVID-19 in comparison with influenza persists “despite viral evolution and improved treatment strategies.”
The study was published this week in JAMA network opened and included 5,212 patients in Switzerland who were hospitalized with COVID-19 or influenza. All COVID patients were infected with the omicron variant and were hospitalized between January 15, 2022 and March 15, 2022. The influenza data included cases from January 2018 to March 15, 2022.
Overall, 7% of COVID-19 patients died, in comparison with 4.4% of flu patients. The researchers noted that the death rate amongst hospitalized COVID patients has declined since their previous study, conducted in the course of the first wave of COVID in the primary half of 2020. At that point, the death rate amongst hospitalized COVID patients was 12.8%.
Meanwhile, 98 percent of the Swiss population has been vaccinated. “Vaccination still plays a significant role in the main outcome,” the authors conclude, because a secondary evaluation of this latest study showed that unvaccinated COVID patients are twice as prone to die in comparison with flu patients.
“Our results show that COVID-19 still cannot be easily compared to influenza,” they wrote.
While the death rate amongst COVID patients was significantly higher, there was no difference in the speed of COVID or flu patients admitted to intensive care, which was about 8%.
One limitation of the study was that no laboratory testing was done on all COVID cases to substantiate the Omicron variant. However, the study authors noted that Omicron accounted for at the least 95% of cases in the course of the time the patients were hospitalized. The authors said they were confident their results weren't biased by the potential for other variants in the information.