{"id":11195,"date":"2026-01-07T20:50:34","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T02:50:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11195"},"modified":"2026-01-07T20:50:37","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T02:50:37","slug":"covid-continues-to-take-a-toll-especially-among-older-adults-study-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/01\/07\/covid-continues-to-take-a-toll-especially-among-older-adults-study-suggests\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID Continues to Take a Toll, Especially Among Older Adults, Study Suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.medpagetoday.com\/infectiousdisease\/covid19\/119306\">MedPageToday<\/a> However, estimated COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths did decrease from 2022 to 2024. Despite the end to the public health emergency declaration in May 2023, COVID-19 continued to have a large impact on the U.S. population and healthcare system, a cross-sectional study suggested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From October 2022 to September 2023, there were an estimated 43.6 million COVID-associated illnesses, 10 million outpatient visits, 1.1 million hospitalizations, and 101,300 deaths, which dropped to an estimated 33 million COVID-associated illnesses, 7.7 million outpatient visits, 879,100 hospitalizations, and 100,800 deaths from October 2023 to September 2024, reported Emilia Koumans, MD, of the CDC&#8217;s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, and colleagues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From 2022-2023 to 2023-2024, estimated national COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths slid by a median 22.2% and 1.0%, respectively, they wrote in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jamainternalmedicine\/fullarticle\/10.1001\/jamainternmed.2025.7179?guestAccessKey=c26397f8-3193-499d-a048-281b78b4d8b6&amp;utm_source=For_The_Media&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=ftm_links&amp;utm_content=tfl&amp;utm_term=010526\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"JAMA Internal Medicine, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>JAMA Internal Medicine<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By comparison, influenza caused 470,676 hospitalizations and 27,965 deaths during the 2023-2024 flu season, according to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/flu-burden\/php\/data-vis\/2023-2024.html\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"CDC estimates, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">CDC estimates<\/a>&nbsp;&#8212; reflecting a much lower burden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Koumans and team pointed out that while adults ages 65 and older make up 17.7% of the U.S. population, this group bore a disproportionately large percentage of the COVID illness burden, accounting for 47.9% of COVID-associated illnesses, 64.3% of outpatient visits, 67.6% of hospitalizations, and 81.2% of deaths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Patients ages 65 and older had the highest estimated hospitalization rates, at 48 per 100,000 people in January 2023, followed by those ages 0-5 months, who had hospitalization rates of 33 per 100,000 in December 2022. By December 2023, estimated hospitalization rates for these two groups were 39 per 100,000 and 26 per 100,000, respectively.<\/p>\n<!-- <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" title=\"QlT auMEWVJPfl EbsC  D rS\">QlT auMEWVJPfl EbsC  D rS<\/a> --><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MedPageToday However, estimated COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths did decrease from 2022 to 2024. Despite the end to the public health emergency declaration in May 2023, COVID-19 continued to have a large impact on the U.S. population and healthcare system, a cross-sectional study suggested. From October 2022 to September 2023, there were an estimated 43.6 million [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11196,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11195\/revisions\/11196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}