COVID-19 cases are surging as U.S. states continue to reopen. Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, North Carolina, Oklahoma and South Carolina have all reported a record number of new infections over the last three days while Alabama recorded a record number of new cases for the fourth day in a row on Sunday. Amid the alarming surge, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that patients with underlying conditions are far more likely to die from COVID-19 in the United States.
The CDC has reported that coronavirus patients with underlying health conditions are hospitalized at a rate six times as often as healthy individuals while they die 12 times as often. The data focuses on 1.32 million laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases between January 22 and May 30 across the U.S. and it compared hospitalization rates, ICU admission rates and death rates for patients both with and without underlying conditions. The most common underlying medical conditions reported in American coronavirus patients are heart disease (32.2 percent), diabetes (30.2 percent) and chronic lung disease (17.5 percent).
The following infographic shows just how serious COVID-19 is for people with existing health problems. The CDC reported that the hospitalization rate for otherwise healthy coronavirus patients in the U.S. is 7.6 percent while it is 45.4 percent for those with underlying conditions. The gulf in the ICU admission rate is also glaring, as is the death rate. 1.6 percent of seemingly healthy patients without any underlying conditions died during the period of the analysis compared to 19.5 percent of patients who did have underlying medical concerns.
