Around one-third of hospital deaths during the initial COVID-19 peak were due to inappropriate treatment.
“We were intubating sick patients very early. Not for the patients’ benefit, but in order to control the epidemic & to save other patients,” Dr. Iwashyna said “That felt awful.”
…As a safety precaution, doctors and hospitals limited the access of health-care workers to coronavirus patients on ventilators, giving them fewer opportunities to check on them. That meant patients required more powerful sedatives to keep them from pulling out throat tubes.
…Overall, survival for Covid-19 patients increased 28% from April to September at HCA hospitals.
…Before the pandemic, between about 30% to more than 40% of ventilator patients died, according to research. Numbers were sharply higher in Wuhan, China. As the pandemic grew, hospitals in the U.S. reported death rates in some cases of about 50% for ventilated Covid-19 patients.