Is Covid-19 more dangerous than the flu?
French researchers have analyzed around 89,500 corona cases and compared them with the risk of death for flu sufferers.
The comparison between Covid-19 and seasonal flu * keeps coming up.
Both diseases are caused by viruses.
However, they are different viruses that weaken the body in different ways.
Scientists from France have now examined in a study which disease is more life-threatening.
According to them, Covid-19 is far more dangerous
.
If you get infected with influenza viruses, you can get seriously sick with the flu.
Anyone who is infected with the pathogen Sars-CoV-2 can get seriously ill with Covid-19.
But which illness is life-threatening more often?
Rumors are circulating that not only do Covid-19 and the flu cause similar symptoms, but neither are either more dangerous than the other.
A study by a research group from Dijon University Hospital refutes this assumption.
The researchers had compared the deaths of 89,530 patients with Covid-19 and 45,819 patients with influenza.
The corona patients were treated in clinics between March 1, 2020 and April 30, 2020.
Influenza patient data came from people hospitalized for severe flu between December 1, 2018 and February 28, 2019.
The result of the researchers:
Covid-19
is three times as deadly as conventional flu.
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Corona or flu: this disease is more dangerous
Of the 89,530 corona patients, a little more than 15,000 or 16.9 percent died, as the
Spiegel
reported.
In the case of flu patients, a little more than 2,600 people died, which corresponds to a percentage of 5.8.
The scientists also found that corona patients had to be treated more often in intensive care units.
16.3 percent were intensive care patients, compared with only 10.3 percent of those with flu.
The researchers see in their study
confirmation that Corona is much more dangerous than flu
.
However, it must be taken into account how severe the flu epidemic was during the respective observation period.
According to one of the authors of the study, Catherine Quantin, the winter of 18/19 was "the worst in France in terms of deaths in the past five years".
However, the
authors of
the study admit that the number
of unreported cases of flu deaths could be
much higher, as tests for influenza viruses may have been carried out less often than currently for the Covid pathogen Sars-CoV-2.
(jg) * Merkur.de is part of the Germany-wide Ippen digital editorial network
.
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