Yes, COVID-19 is still killing people, though the numbers have dropped dramatically from pandemic peaks. In the most recent 28-day reporting period tracked by the World Health Organization (ending April 5, 2026), 848 COVID-19 deaths were reported globally. To put that in perspective, the virus was killing tens of thousands of people per week at its worst points in 2021 and early 2022. The threat has not disappeared, but it has narrowed considerably in who it affects most severely.
How Many People Are Dying Now
The WHO’s most recent weekly data shows about 135 deaths in the Americas and 19 in Europe over a single week, with zero reported in the Western Pacific region. The United States accounts for the largest share of reported deaths globally, with 686 of the 848 worldwide deaths in the most recent four-week window. Some of that imbalance reflects differences in how thoroughly countries report COVID deaths rather than a true concentration of all fatalities in one country. Still, the U.S. remains the single largest contributor to the global count.
These numbers represent a fraction of what they once were. At the pandemic’s deadliest stretches, more people died in a single day in the U.S. alone than now die worldwide in a month. The decline is real, driven by widespread immunity from both infections and vaccination, less lethal virus variants, and better clinical knowledge of how to treat severe cases.
Who Is Most at Risk
COVID deaths today are heavily concentrated among older adults and people with serious underlying health conditions. The virus has become far less dangerous for the general population, but for certain groups, it remains a genuine threat.
The CDC maintains a long list of conditions that raise the risk of severe illness and death. The most significant include:
- Heart conditions such as heart failure, coronary artery disease, and high blood pressure
- Chronic lung disease including COPD, moderate-to-severe asthma, and pulmonary hypertension
- Diabetes (type 1 or type 2)
- Chronic kidney disease at any stage
- Weakened immune systems from cancer treatment, organ transplants, HIV, or long-term use of immune-suppressing medications
- Obesity (BMI of 30 or higher)
- Dementia and other neurological conditions
Several less obvious risk factors also appear on the CDC’s list: substance use disorders, mental health conditions like depression and schizophrenia, physical inactivity, and current or former smoking. Pregnancy also raises the risk of severe outcomes. People with disabilities, including intellectual and developmental disabilities and Down syndrome, face elevated risk as well.
The common thread is that most people dying from COVID today were already medically vulnerable before they caught the virus. A healthy 40-year-old faces a very different level of risk than a 75-year-old with diabetes and heart disease.
How COVID Compares to the Flu Now
For most age groups, COVID and influenza have converged in severity. A CDC study comparing hospitalized patients found that outcomes for COVID (during the Omicron era) and seasonal flu were statistically similar for adults 50 and older, including death rates. The one exception: adults aged 18 to 49 hospitalized with COVID still died at higher rates than those hospitalized with the flu. For everyone else, the gap has closed.
That convergence matters. It doesn’t mean COVID has become trivial. The flu kills tens of thousands of Americans in a bad season. It means COVID has settled into a similar pattern: a respiratory illness that is manageable for most people but can be fatal for those who are older or medically fragile.
Vaccination Still Makes a Measurable Difference
Even with widespread prior infection, vaccination continues to reduce the risk of hospitalization and death. Research comparing reinfected unvaccinated people to vaccinated people with breakthrough infections found that unvaccinated individuals had roughly twice the rate of hospitalization or death within 28 days (7.31 vs. 4.69 per 1,000 person-days). That gap held across subgroups: men, women, Black and white patients, people with and without obesity, and both those under and over 65.
The protective effect was especially pronounced in adults 65 and older, where the hospitalization or death rate was 16.62 per 1,000 person-days for unvaccinated individuals compared to 12.14 for vaccinated ones. For younger adults, the difference was smaller and less statistically definitive, which tracks with the overall lower risk in that age group.
Antiviral Treatments Have Limits
Early in the pandemic, antiviral pills were seen as a potential game-changer for keeping high-risk patients out of the hospital. The picture is more nuanced now. Two large clinical trials (PANORAMIC and CanTreatCOVID) tested Paxlovid in vaccinated, high-risk outpatients and found no clear reduction in hospitalizations or deaths. In both trials, the rates of hospitalization or death were already very low in both the treatment and control groups, under 1.2% across the board.
This doesn’t mean antivirals are useless. They may still help specific patients, particularly those who are immunocompromised or unvaccinated. But for most vaccinated people, even those with risk factors, the baseline risk of dying from a COVID infection has become low enough that it’s difficult for any treatment to show a dramatic benefit on top of existing immunity.
The Bottom Line on Risk Today
COVID is no longer a mass-casualty event. It is a persistent respiratory virus that kills roughly 200 people per week worldwide based on current reporting, with the true number likely somewhat higher due to inconsistent surveillance across countries. The people it kills are overwhelmingly those who are elderly, immunocompromised, or living with multiple chronic health conditions. For the broader population, the risk of dying from COVID has dropped to a level comparable to seasonal influenza, though it has not reached zero and likely never will.