Four Years On, Covid Remains Worse Killer Than Flu, Study Finds

Covid-19 remained a bigger killer than the flu last winter, despite hopes the pandemic virus would eventually blend into the background with other respiratory germs that cause seasonal epidemics, a US study showed.

Patients hospitalized for Covid had a 35% higher risk of dying within 30 days than influenza patients, Ziyad Al-Aly and colleagues at the clinical epidemiology center of the Veterans Affairs St Louis Health Care System in Missouri found. Covid posed a 60% higher mortality risk than flu in hospitalized patients during the 2022-2023 season, the same researchers showed last year.

The findings, published Wednesday in JAMA, ...