‘Elevated’ risk of death even two years after a Covid infection, new study shows

A new study believed to be the first of its kind has documented the extent of damage caused by Long Covid. See how it affects you.

The risk of death is “significantly elevated” for years for people hospitalised with Covid, experts have warned.

Covid hospital patients face severely worse health complications like lung problems, diabetes, and general fatigue, a new study published in Nature Magazine found.

Even people with mild or moderate cases that never ended up in hospital are not spared from the consequences when compared with those who never had Covid, showing an elevated risk of more than 20 medical conditions. Included in these conditions are silent killers like cardiovascular issues, blood clotting trouble, diabetes, gastrointestinal problems and kidney disorders.

The study, carried out by epidemiologists at Veterans hospital in St Louis, Missouri, is believed to be the first to document the extent of after-effects for Covid patients – or Long Covid.

The study is believed to be the first to document the array of after-effects that patients can develop. Picture: Getty Images

The study looked at medical records for almost 140,000 US veterans who were diagnosed with Covid early in the pandemic and compared it to a group of almost six million veterans who weren’t known to have been infected.

After two years the “cumulative burden of health loss due to Long Covid” does finally decline, the study's authors warned.

But they added “it remains unclear whether and over what time horizon the risk of post acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 attenuates and becomes not significant”.

“A lot of people think, ‘I got Covid, I got over it and I’m fine,” but “maybe you’ve forgotten about the SARS-CoV-2 infection … but Covid did not forget about you,” senior author and clinical epidemiologist Ziyad Al-Aly said.

“It’s still wreaking havoc in your body.”

More than 5000 deaths linked to Covid have been reported in Australia so far this year.

Long Covid is a collection of symptoms including extreme fatigue (tiredness), shortness of breath, heart palpitations, chest pain or tightness that continue more than 12 weeks after a Covid infection, and can be severe enough to prevent a person working or living a normal life.

The condition is still not fully understood and often affects every person differently.

“(The findings) capture what we are hearing at the narrative level from patients, that the systems (affected after recovery from Covid’s acute phase) are varied, that it results in loss of quality of life, loss of work and school,” epidemiologist Francesca Beaudoin, who oversees Brown University’s long-Covid initiative, said.

Originally published as ‘Elevated’ risk of death even two years after a Covid infection, new study shows