Mortality of COVID-19 and Seasonal Influenza in Southern Nevada and the United States

Mortality of COVID-19 and Seasonal Influenza in Southern Nevada and the United States Nilsha Khurana, OMS-II; nkhurana@student.touro.edu Avneet Bedi, OMS-II; abedi2@student.touro.edu Weldon E Havins, MD, JD, LLM, FCLM, Professor Emeritus Touro University Nevada College of Osteopathic Medicine In early March 2020, Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was declared a national pandemic by the World Health Organization. Many have claimed that COVID-19 is no more serious than the influenza. Although influenza and COVID-19 have some symptoms in common, COVID-19 is a more destructive virus. Because the virus that causes COVID-19 is newly introduced in human populations, there is an urgent need to know more about how the disease impacts human populations. The purpose of this study was to estimate and compare mortality rates between COVID-19 and influenza in Southern Nevada and in the United States. Data for Southern Nevada was collected from Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD) and covered COVID-19 and influenza deaths from 2016-2020. Nationwide data was obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and covered 2016-2020 for both COVID-19 and influenza. Deaths per 100,000 people, which were attributable to influenza and Coronavirus, were calculated for the Southern Nevada population and for the United States population. After analyzing the data, it was found that there has been an average of 113.19/100,000 COVID deaths in Nevada since the discovery of the virus. On the other hand, for influenza, there has been an average of 1.8/100,000 deaths in Nevada for the past four flu seasons, which typically peaks between December and February. A similar trend is observed nationally. According to the CDC data, it was calculated that nationwide, there are about 111.55/100,000 COVID deaths. Contrarily, there are about 12.46/100,000 influenza-related deaths nationwide. According to the calculations, COVID-19 has a mortality rate higher than reported for influenza, both in Nevada and in the nation. The differences in mortality rates are linked to other important ways that COVID-19 differs from influenza. Because COVID-19 is novel, every individual is therefore susceptible to the virus. Awareness that COVID-19 is not just the flu needs to be made more vigorously. COVID-19 will be a more lethal virus than the influenza strains that seasonally affect world populations. References upon request 2021 American College of Legal Medicine JOURNAL OF LEGAL MEDICINE 2021, VOL. 41, NO. S1, 31 https://doi.org/10.1080/01947648.2021.1914483