Instead, a new investigation showed that by mid-August, the death rate in those hospitalized with coronavirus-related illness had dropped from 25.6 percentage points to about 7.6 percentage points. Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the study showed that a younger, healthier group of people were getting infected and were arriving at the hospital with less severe symptoms than those infected in the spring.
However, the researchers’ analysis showed that these factors accounted for only part of the improvement in survival. The rest, they suspect, resulted from healthcare providers’ growing experience with the coronavirus. For example, physicians learned that resting COVID-19 patients on their stomachs rather than their backs and delaying the use of ventilators as long as possible were more effective practices, say the study authors. Drugs likely helped as well. In addition, other factors such as decreasing hospital volumes, less exposure to infection, and earlier testing and treatment, may have played a role.
“Our findings suggest that while COVID-19 remains a terrible disease, our efforts to improve treatment are probably working,” says study lead author Leora Horwitz, MD, an associate professor in the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone Health. “Even in the absence of a silver-bullet treatment or vaccine, we are protecting more of our patients through a host of small changes,” says Dr. Horwitz, who is also director of the Center for Healthcare Innovation and Delivery Science at NYU Langone.
