With 5,000 Indiana deaths and counting, COVID-19 makes clear it's not the flu

Over the weekend Indiana passed the milestone of 5,000 deaths due to COVID-19. Less than four weeks ago, the state crossed the threshold of 4,000 deaths, meaning that in the past month, more than 1,000 additional people have died.

As of Monday, when the total number of confirmed deaths for the state reached 5,067, the mortality rate in Indiana was just under 1.7% for COVID-19.

That doesn’t sound like a very high number. But consider what that is a percentage of — nearly 301,000 people who have tested positive for the virus.

COVID-19 is now the third leading cause of death in Indiana, behind heart disease and cancer. While each of those kill more than twice as many people a year as the coronavirus has claimed in the past eight months, the illness that was unknown a year ago has now killed more people than chronic respiratory disease, accidents, strokes, Alzheimer’s disease, and diabetes.

Only 13 other states have seen more deaths from COVID-19 than Indiana, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Three of Indiana's immediate neighbors — Illinois, Michigan and Ohio — have all had more total deaths – more than 12,000, nearly 9,000 and just under 6,000, respectively. Missouri and Kentucky have seen far fewer people die.

Ohio, however, has seen a far lower rate of people die, 51 per 100,000 compared with Indiana's 79 per 100,000.

If you look at the past seven days, however, only seven other states have seen more people die than Indiana has, according to CDC statistics.

Indiana has seen 395 people die compared with Illinois’ 889 and Michigan’s 499. Ohio has lost 274 residents to COVID-19 in the past week.

In case this leaves any doubt, the coronavirus is no flu. It has killed far more people than the flu typically does. 

During last year’s flu season, 132 people statewide died from influenza, according to the Indiana Department of Health. Two years earlier, the flu vaccine did not provide a good match for the circulating strains, and that season saw more than 300 deaths in Indiana.

If you add pneumonia into the mix, about 1,100 people a year die in Indiana from influenza/pneumonia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That is still far fewer than the 5,000 who have died in Indiana of COVID-19 since March.

And this year, so far, only one person has died of influenza since the start of the flu season in October.

In that time period, more than 1,000 people have died of COVID.

Contact IndyStar reporter Shari Rudavsky at shari.rudavsky@indystar.com. Follow her on Facebook and on Twitter: @srudavsky.