According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Long Covid has contributed to at least 3,500 deaths in the United States.
It is believed to be the first nationwide examination of whether long Covid or related terms appear in official American death records. Researchers and other experts said the results added to growing recognition of how serious long-term post- Covid medical problems can be.
It is not one of the leading causes of death, but, considering that this is the first time that we have looked at it and that long Covid is an illness that we are learning more about, the major lesson is that it is possible for someone.
Long Covid is a constellation of symptoms that can last for months or longer. Breathing problems, heart issues, extreme fatigue and cognitive and neurological issues are some of the most disabling symptoms of post- Covid.
Every state and Washington, D.C. were looked at by the researchers. More than one million certificates had a diagnostic code for Covid-19 as a cause of death. Long Covid or terms like post- Covid syndrome, chronic Covid or long-haul Covid were listed.
According to Ms. Ahmad and experts not involved in the research, the number of deaths related to long Covid was probably underestimated. It took a long time for the condition to be identified. The new diagnostic code for Covid was not included in the study because it wasn't being used to report deaths in the US.
Jeffrey Martin, chief of the division of clinical epidemiology in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, was not involved in the research.
In the past, death certificates have been incomplete in explaining how a person died, according to Dr. Martin.
More death certificates mention long Covid after 2020 and the condition is more likely to be listed on death certificates in the weeks or months after a peak of Covid cases, according to a study.
Some of the long Covid patterns related to age, sex, race and ethnicity were different from deaths caused by the initial infections. The study found that while Black and Hispanic people had higher death rates from the initial coronaviruses, they didn't have higher death rates from long Covid.
Black and Hispanic patients might not have received appropriate long-covid diagnoses due to the systemic disparity that has resulted in less access to health care. The study said that because Black and Hispanic patients died at higher rates from the initial illness than white patients, they may have fewer Covid-19 survivors left to experience long- Covid conditions.
The majority of deaths were in people 75 and older. More than a third of the death certificates that mentioned long Covid listed the underlying or main cause of death as a non- Covid condition.
The director of rehabilitation innovation for the Mount Sinai Health System in New York was not involved in the study.
He said the study appeared to be mainly capturing deaths of people who experienced serious initial infections with the coronaviruses and who survived, but ended up with organ damage and other serious problems. He said suicides by people with devastating post-covid symptoms should be studied.
The Documenting Covid-19 project published a report on Wednesday that showed a snapshot of deaths in Minnesota, New Mexico and a few other places. 18 of the 28 deaths associated with long Covid in Minnesota during those years were in people over the age of 80, according to a report conducted by the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Columbia University. In New Mexico, a third of the deaths were in people under the age of 60, and some were frontline or essential workers.
According to experts evaluating the C.D.C. study, there was an incomplete picture of mortality linked to long Covid and of the larger toll of the condition in the United States.
It shouldn't be used as a proxy for saying "Oh, well, long Covid isn't that severe because look how few deaths there are" We should not measure the damage done by deaths alone.
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