Cancer patients twice as likely to die from Covid-19 — Study

WASHINGTON: People with cancer are more than twice as likely to die from Covid-19 than those without it, a large study published Thursday found.

The data on more than 900 patients in the US, Canada and Spain which appeared in a paper in The Lancet, found that mortality increased the further the cancer had progressed.

Cancer patients with decreased ability to carry out daily life tasks were more at risk than those with higher functionality.

The paper’s authors looked at how many people died within 30 days of being diagnosed of Covid-19 of all causes.

“The 30-day all-cause mortality was 13 per cent, more than twice the mortality reported as the global average by Johns

Hopkins,” Toni Choueiri, an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who coauthored the paper told AFP.

In keeping with previous studies, the team also found that advanced age, male sex, the presence of two or more underlying conditions, and former smoking status were all also tied to increased risk of death. But the receipt of chemotherapy or other anticancer therapies within four weeks of Covid-19 diagnosis did not affect mortality outcomes.

“Taken together, these results suggest that fit patients with cancer and few comorbidities can and should proceed with appropriate anti-cancer treatment,” said Choueiri.