April 9, 2021

Mortality Among US Patients Hospitalized With SARS-CoV-2 Infection in 2020

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Testing and Treatment

Keywords (Tags): public health

• A large, retrospective US cohort study of persons hospitalized with SARS-CoV-2 infection (N=503,409) found that in-hospital mortality declined across all age groups between March 1 and November 1, 2020 from 20% to 9%. This finding was not explained by a change in the proportion of hospitalized patients by age, which was fairly stable throughout the study period. The authors suggest that decreased mortality may be due to the adoption of novel effective therapeutics, including remdesivir, and improvements in clinical management of severe COVID-19. 

Finelli et al. (Apr 8, 2021). Mortality Among US Patients Hospitalized With SARS-CoV-2 Infection in 2020. JAMA Network Open. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.6556