Covid-19 is five times deadlier than the flu among people hospitalized for either disease, according to a new study in the British Medical Journal that confirms previous research.
Covid-19 patients were also more likely to need ventilators, be admitted to ICUs and faced longer hospital stays. The study reviewed data from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on 3,641 people hospitalized for Covid-19 earlier this year and 12,676 for flu from 2017 through 2019.
Previous comparisons drew from disparate data. “Our research represents an apples-to-apples comparison between the two diseases,” said study leader Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Washington University.
Other new research finds that while younger adults are less likely to die from Covid-19, “July appears to have been the deadliest month among this age group in modern American history” due to sheer numbers:
