COVID-19 THREE TIMES DEADLIER THAN THE FLU, STUDY FINDS

The severity of the pandemic was brought into sharp relief by a new study reported on Wednesday that COVID-19 is 3.5 times more deadly than influenza. The study, which looked at hospitalizations for the flu between November 2019 and June 2020 in seven large Canadian hospitals, also found COVID patients needed more intensive-care treatment and stayed in hospital longer than those with influenza. “We can now say definitively that COVID-19 is much more severe than seasonal influenza,” dr. Amol Verma, of St. Michael’s hospital and the university of Toronto, said in a news release. To date, Canada has seen more than 810,000 cases, with deaths approaching 21,000.