Depending how many cases are assumed given widespread unreported infections confirmed through at-home tests, COVID-19 rates arguably have fallen to levels of a bad flu season. But it’s still …
Today’s hyper-transmissible strain of the COVID-19 virus has sent cases soaring across the country. But rising deaths — the grim marker of earlier dangerous surges — haven’t kept pace, and the average risk of dying from an infection is dropping to levels almost as low as seasonal influenza, leading epidemiologists say.George Lemp, an infectious disease epidemiologist who has analyzed California public health data through the pandemic, thinks so.
Lemp said California Department of Public Health data show that California’s COVID-19 death rate early in the pandemic, from February 2020 to May 2021, was 1.7% overall and dropped to 1.11% when the delta variant hit from July to December 2021. That would conservatively put the death rates from the current omicron BA.5 variant around 0.19%, a more flu-like level, he said. Though death rates are progressively higher with age, they have declined in all age groups.
While epidemiologists agree the current virus is proving less lethal than earlier variants, it is still a killer and has made the many people who were infected recently and recovered absolutely miserable. The virus is killing an average of nearly 400 Americans and 40 Californians a day.
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