COVID-19 patients have an elevated risk of death for at least 18 months after their infection, a new large-scale study suggests.
For the study, published on Jan. 18 in the medical journal Cardiovascular Research, scientists identified 7,500 patients in the United Kingdom who were diagnosed with COVID-19 between March 16 to Nov. 30, 2020, before any COVID vaccines were available.
Each COVID patient was then matched with up to 10 people who didn’t get COVID during the first 18 months of the outbreak of a similar health condition: age, sex, ethnicity, body mass index, cardiovascular, and other factors. Researchers also included a historical cohort from back in 2018 to rule out the deterioration in quality of health care services during the pandemic….