evidence: A new analysis suggests that a high percentage of people who required help from a ventilator due to a COVID-19 infection also developed secondary bacterial pneumonia. This pneumonia was responsible for a higher mortality rate than the COVID-19 infection. So while COVID-19 may have put these patients in the hospital, it was actually an infection brought on by the use of a mechanical ventilator that was more likely to be the cause of death when this infection didn't respond to treatment. [...] Instead, COVID-19 patients were more likely to develop ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) and for longer periods. Cases where VAP didn't respond to treatment were significant in terms of the overall mortality rates in the study.