More people with COVID-19 now surviving ICU
A meta-analysis suggests mortality has declined to 40%, lower than at the beginning of the pandemic.
More patients with severe COVID-19 are surviving ICU worldwide than earlier in the pandemic, despite a lack of proven therapies, a meta-analysis suggests.
UK doctors reviewed 24 studies published between December 2019 and the end of May, covering a total of 10,000 patients who were either discharged from ICU or died in the hospital.
They found the mortality rate had declined from above 50% in March to about 40% in May, still a higher rate than seen in ICUs for other viral pneumonias.
“Optimistically, countries in the later phase of the pandemic may be coping better with COVID-19,” they wrote in the journal Anaesthesia.
