Covid survivors suffer heart trouble

Study reveals that heart failure and blood clots are threats for a year

Heart damage from Covid-19 extends well beyond the disease’s initial stages, according to a study that found even people who were never sick enough to need hospitalisation are in danger of developing heart failure and deadly blood clots a year later.

Heart disease and stroke are already the leading causes of death worldwide. The increased likelihood of lethal heart complications in Covid survivors — who number in the hundreds of millions globally — will add to its devastation, according to the study, which is under consideration for publication by a Nature journal.

“The aftereffects of Covid-19 are substantial,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the clinical epidemiology Centre at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System in Missouri, who led the research. “Governments and health systems must wake up to the reality that Covid will cast a tall shadow in the form of long Covid, and has devastating consequences. I am concerned that we are not taking this seriously enough.”

Major risk

The chances of a heart attack, stroke, or other cardiovascular event in the first 12 months of Covid recovery increase with the severity of the initial illness, the researchers found. They compared the risks of heart complications in 151,195 veterans who survived Covid to the risk in more than 3.6 million of their peers who didn’t contract the pandemic disease. The data were collected from the largest integrated health-care system in the US. Most of its users are white and male, which may limit how generalisable the study’s findings are to other groups, the authors said. They found non-hospitalised Covid patients had a 39 per cent increased risk of developing heart failure.