Covid ICU deaths have plunged, but progress may be stalling: study

Covid-19 treatments and improved hospital care have reduced death rates in intensive care by more than a third since the early months of the pandemic, but this progress might be stalling, according to research published yesterday.  

Whereas medical staff in the first wave of the epidemic had few insights to help them tackle the new virus, they now have some effective drugs and therapies for treating severely ill patients.

A large-scale meta-analysis of overall mortality of Covid-19 patients in intensive care units (ICUs) around the world, published in the journal Anaesthesia, found that it had fallen to 36 percent by October.

An earlier analysis by the same authors found that ICU mortality had fallen from 60 percent in late March 2020 to 42 percent at the end of May.