Even as the novel coronavirus continues to stride and the cases increase, a positive trend may be emerging in the United States with the fall in the COVID-19 death rate.
According to a report by The New York Times, the survival rates, of even seriously ill patients, have been improving. In fact, at one hospital where 30% of deaths from COVID were recorded in March, the rate was 3% by June end.
A similar trend may also be visible in England. John M. Dennis, a University of Exeter Medical School researcher who is first author of a paper about improved survival rates in Britain, accepted for publication in the journal Critical Care Medicine, told the NYT,
“In late March, four in 10 people in intensive care were dying. By the end of June, survival was over 80 percent. It was really quite dramatic.”John M. Dennis
Considering the fact that there is no clear evidence to say if the virus has become more virulent or easily transmissible than before, what could possibly explain the shift?
One hypothesis was that the proportion of elderly people getting infected had come down as they had avoided stepping out and isolated themselves. Those who were getting admitted were majorly adults, who have a higher survival rate than the elderly.
However, doctors quoted in the article believed that the progress wasn’t just a function of the demographic changes, but rather that of some ‘real improvement’. Researchers at NYU Langone Health, who looked at over 5,000 patients at three hospitals from March to August, found that even when they controlled for differences in the patients’ age, sex, race, underlying health problems and severity of Covid symptoms — like blood oxygen levels at admission — the death rates had dropped from 25.6% in March to 7.6% in August.
The improvement could be a result of a variety of factors including better knowledge of the disease, better understanding of how to treat it and which drugs to use, and heightened community awareness.
Dr Leora Horwitz, director of NYU Langone’s Center for Healthcare Innovation & Delivery Science and senior author of the paper in Journal of Hospital Medicine, said, “We don’t have a magic bullet cure, but we have a lot, a lot of little things, that add up. We understand better when people need to be on ventilators and when they don’t, and what complications to watch for, like blood clots and kidney failure. We understand how to watch for oxygen levels even before patients are in the hospital, so we can bring them in earlier. And of course, we understand that steroids are helpful, and possibly some other medications.”
However, this is not the time to be complacent, the doctors urged. A drop in the death rate still did not mean people weren’t dying. In fact, the death rate was still much higher than for flu and other respiratory diseases. Dr Robert A. Phillips, chief physician executive at Houston Methodist told the NYT, that the disease remains “not only deadly - 10 times more deadly probably than a bad influenza - but it also has long-term complications. You don’t have that from the flu.”
“I don’t want to pretend this is benign. But it definitely is something that has given me hope,” Horwitz said.
(With inputs from the New York Times)
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