Patients who survive severe Covid-19 may not be lucky enough to survive for long, a study has said suggesting that they are more than twice as likely to succumb over the years than those who remain uninfected or experience milder virus symptoms.
As these deaths frequently occurred long after the initial infection had passed, they may never have been linked to Covid-19 by the patients’ families or doctors, the study published in Frontiers in Medicine has found.
This is for the first time that any study has found that Covid can cause severe symptoms and death for vulnerable people, particularly those with underlying health conditions. So far, studies have been highlighting that some people may experience long Covid, signs and symptoms that last for a few weeks or months after infection. Symptoms such as fatigue and shortness of breath can linger for months after the infection has passed.
Indicating the importance of vaccination, the study said that coronavirus infections may significantly damage long-term health. The increased risk of dying was greater for patients under 65, and only 20% of the severe Covid-19 patients who died did so because of typical Covid complications, such as respiratory failure.
“We conducted a previous study that showed that patients with severe Covid-19 who recovered were at significantly greater risk of being hospitalised in the subsequent six months,” said ProfArch Mainous of the University of Florida, the lead author of the study. “This new study extended that to investigate mortality risk over the next 12 months.”
The researchers tracked the electronic health records of 13,638 patients who underwent a PCR test for Covid within the University of Florida health system, with 178 patients experiencing severe virus symptoms, 246 mild or moderate Covid-19 and the rest testing negative. All patients included in the study recovered from the disease, and the researchers tracked their outcomes.
The study found that patients who were very unwell with coronavirus had a greater chance of dying over the next year, a trend that was particularly notable among those aged under 65.