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Why do COVID death rates seem to be falling?

Hard-won experience, changing demographics and reduced strain on hospitals are all possibilities — but no one knows how long the change will last.
  1. Heidi Ledford
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A man raises a fist in the air as he is pushed in a wheelchair down a hospital hallway lined with applauding workers in scrubs

More individuals treated for severe COVID-19 seem to be surviving now than in the early weeks of the pandemic. Credit: Diego Vara/Reuters

Many regions of the world have experienced the pandemic in punishing waves, but Chennai in India endured a six-month flood, according to Bharath Kumar Tirupakuzhi Vijayaraghavan. The Apollo Main Hospital, where Vijayaraghavan works as an intensive-care specialist, was never overwhelmed, but it was relentlessly busy. And although the numbers of people with COVID-19 finally began to fall in mid-October, Vijayaraghavan worries about the possible impact of the festival season, which began on 20 October, and the public’s waning compliance with health measures. “Everybody is exhausted,” he says. “It’s become a never-ending health-care problem.”

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Nature 587, 190-192 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03132-4

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