Covid patients in hospital three times more likely to die than those with seasonal flu, study finds

Adults hospitalised with Covid-19 are three times as likely to die from the disease as those suffering from seasonal influenza, according to a new study.

Researchers in Spain found that Covid is associated with longer stays in hospital and intensive care, and costs nearly twice as much to treat.

Researchers examined the medical records of 187 patients admitted to hospital with seasonal influenza between 2017 and 2019, and Covid-19 patients hospitalised during the first wave of the pandemic between March and May 2020, all of whom required oxygen therapy.

Overall, 15 per cent of Covid-19 patients and 5 per cent of influenza patients died of any cause within 30-days of hospitalisation, and the death rate after 90 days was even higher at 19 per cent for Covid patients and 6 per cent for influenza.

Further analyses showed that Covid-19 patients spent far longer in hospital compared with influenza patients.

They also found that the average cost of critical care for Covid-19 patients was almost twice as much as for influenza patients.

The average age of the influenza patients was 76 and the group was 55 per cent male, while the Covid patients had an average age of 67 years and 49 per cent of them were male.

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Influenza patients tended to have more existing chronic illnesses and problems performing activities associated with daily life than Covid-19 patients, but were less likely to be overweight or obese.

The analysis found that Covid-19 was associated with higher risk of infection severity and admission to ICU.

In addition, Covid-19 patients were more likely to experience certain complications such as acute kidney injury, blood clots, and moderate to severe acute respiratory distress syndrome, where the lungs cannot provide the body’s vital organs with enough oxygen.

Meanwhile, influenza patients were more likely to suffer from bacterial pneumonia.

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“Our findings suggest Covid-19 is far more lethal than influenza,” lead author Dr Inmaculada Lopez Montesinos, from the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona, Spain, said.

“Despite influenza patients being older and having more comorbid illnesses, Covid-19 patients had consistently worse health outcomes and were considerably more expensive to treat.

“Even for those people who are lucky enough to survive Covid-19 and make it out of the hospital, they will be forever scarred by the consequences. It is vital that people get fully vaccinated and boosted against both viruses.”

There are several limitations in the study that the authors have acknowledged, including that it was conducted in one tertiary-care hospital in Spain, so the findings might not be generalisable to other populations.

They also noted that no genotyping studies were conducted, and although it is highly likely that Covid-19 patients were affected by wild-type B.1, the results may not reflect the current scenario in which multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants are circulating globally.

Likewise, the absence of vaccinated Covid-19 patients during the study period may not reflect the current profile of inpatients with the virus.

The study was presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Lisbon, Portugal.