If you had severe Covid-19, then you must not overexert yourself or overwork for a period of 1 to 2 years so that you do not become a victim of sudden cardiac arrest. Union Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Monday cautioned, indicating that the potential for cardiovascular complications doesn’t go away after someone has recovered from Covid.
The Minister cited a study by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in this regard in the wake of several cases of heart attack that were reported recently during garba dance as part of the Navratri celebrations in Gujarat.
He said that people with Covid history should avoid overexerting themselves. Speaking with the media in Gujarat, Mandaviya the health minister said that “the ICMR has a detailed study that says people who have suffered with severe Covid should stay away from strenuous exercise or extreme amounts of work for a period of 1 to 2 years so that they don’t succumb to sudden cardiac arrest.”
“The ICMR has conducted a detailed study and found out that people who have suffered from severe Covid-19 infection should not do hard work for some time. It should be postponed for a year or two,” Mandaviya said.
However, its not only Gujarat, the trend of deaths due to heart attacks is being reported from across the country among young and middle-aged people.
A senior official from the Union Health Ministry said that the ICMR has launched two studies to investigate rising deaths due to heart attacks among youth post Covid-19. He said that the studies target the individuals aged 18 to 45 years.
Dr Bahl too had confirmed at an event recently that the research, which focuses on people between the ages of 18 and 45, seeks to understand the unexplained deaths of otherwise healthy individuals. “We are trying to understand the reasons or differences when we compare the results of these autopsies to those in previous years or pre-COVID years,” Dr Bahl had told a news agency.
The core objective of the studies was to ascertain whether underlying physiological changes within the human body could be attributed to the sudden deaths occurring among young adults in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. By identifying discernible patterns, such as an elevated incidence of sudden heart failure or lung collapse, researchers aspire to delineate the associations that might exist.
The other case-control study identified centres on individuals aged 18 to 45 who have experienced sudden deaths in the past year. This research leverages data pooled from 40 centres spanning India, where Covid-19 patients were monitored for a full year subsequent to their discharge.
Worldwide too such a disturbing pattern is being noticed. According to a study by Susan Cheng, director of the Institute for Research on Healthy Aging in the Department of Cardiology at the Smidt Heart Institute, heart attack deaths among young people have spiked in the US since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Cheng, senior and co-corresponding author of the study said that, “There are a lot of things that COVID can do to the cardiovascular system. It appears to be able to increase the stickiness of the blood and increase ... the likelihood of blood clot formation. It seems to stir up inflammation in the blood vessels. It seems to also cause in some people an overwhelming stress-whether it’s related directly to the infection or situations around the infection-that can also cause a spike in blood pressure.”
Cheng also said that people who have COVID-19 multiple times also are at higher risk of heart problems. She emphasized keeping blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar under control.
Yet another large 2022 study tracking medical records of 691,455 patients in the United States too found that people had a significantly higher risk of developing virtually all heart-related diseases in the year after a Covid infection. According to the research, people were 1.5 times more likely to have a stroke, nearly twice as likely to have a heart attack, and had between 1.6 and 2.4 times the risk of developing different types of arrhythmias.
