In a piece for The Conversation, Professor Monica Gandhi at the University of California, writes how, thanks to improved treatment as a results of experience gained, survival rates for COVID patients have dramatically risen.
In three New York hospitals, out of 1724 patients hospitalised for COVID in March, 430 died. In August, 134 hospitalised and five died. However, this may have been due to more vulnerable patients being infected. Therefore, to avoid bias, the researchers accounted for age of patients at hospitalisation, race, amount of oxygen support individuals needed on arrival and such risk factors as being overweight, smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes, lung disease. Even so, they found that patients were three times as likely to survive when admitted in August as compared to March, which indicates that this is due to improved treatment resulting from research into and experience with the disease.
A similar study in the UK looked at COVID patient survival rates in high-dependency units (HDU) and ICU, and found a continuous improvement in survival rates of 12.7% per week in the HDU and 8.9% per week in ICU.
Prof Gandhi attributes this to a better understanding of the disease, and the regular use of remdesivir and dexamethasone as treatments.
Source: The Conversation
