For the first time since 2020, Covid is now killing fewer people than flu across the US, official figures show.
CDC data showed that in the week to February 1, the latest available, 1.5 percent of all deaths were linked to Covid, while two percent were down to the flu.
This marked the second week in a row that flu deaths had outpaced those from the pandemic virus. It comes as the US experiences its worst flu season in decades.
Covid was behind up to 30 percent of deaths nationwide in the first year of the pandemic, but since January 2023 it has not been responsible for more than five percent.
Experts credit the fall to widespread immunity, developed through successful vaccination drives and prior infections. And Covid mutating to become less lethal.
For comparison, over the last four years flu had not been behind more than 1.5 percent of deaths nationwide until last week.
CDC data showed that nationwide there were 549 deaths linked to the flu in the week to February 1, the latest available — accounting for two percent of the total.
The above image shows medical workers in the ER at Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital on April 13, 2020
In the same week, there were an estimated 398 deaths from Covid — about 1.5 percent of the total.
In the previous week, data showed there were 753 deaths linked to the flu, or 1.68 percent of the total.
A total of 668 were linked to Covid, or 1.5 percent of the total.
While the data is provisional, separate figures show that for California there are also now more people dying from the flu than Covid.
Dr Aaron Glatt, an epidemiologist at Mount Sinai, told DailyMail.com that this was the worst flu season he had ever experienced.
‘We see a lot of flu A, we are seeing probably, according to the CDC, the worst flu season ever.
‘That’s also in terms of my own experience too, in terms of what I see myself in the hospital and with colleagues.’
It comes as the US experiences its worst flu season in at least 28 years, with doctors in New York now being urged to test some hospitalized patients for bird flu.
The state’s health department issued an alert to physicians on February 3 telling them to test people with type A influenza for the H5N1 strain ‘within 24 hours of admission’.
Type A is a family of influenza viruses that includes several strains, including the one that caused the 2009 swine flu pandemic and H5N1 which is currently tearing through dairy and poultry farms in the US.
More than 24million people have been sickened in the latest flu outbreak, data suggests, while 310,000 have been hospitalized and 13,000 have died.
Experts say the surge could be down to a less effective flu vaccine being available this season or people taking fewer infection control measures.
