New Research Says Mild COVID Raises Long-Term Death Risk 60%

Researchers say we're just at the "tip of the iceberg" in American Covid deaths.

New research put out this week from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis concluces that COVID-19 survivors, including those with cases so mild they could easily recover at home without any hospitalization, have an increased risk of death in the six months following their infections with the virus. The researchers also catalogued a lengthy list of diseases associated with COVID-19, painting a fuller picture of the scope of long-term complications the disease is likely to put on the world in coming years.

Viki Mohamad

It seems getting through the pandemic on a basic level will leave the human race with an enormous pile of smoldering ashes to clean up, perhaps for an entire generation or longer. Washington University's study involved more than 87,000 COVID-19 patients and nearly five million control patients in a federal database according to the published report in Nature.

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"Our study demonstrates that up to six months after diagnosis, the risk of death following even a mild case of COVID-19 is not trivial and increases with disease severity," said senior author Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at the well-respected St. Louis, Missouri research facility. "It is not an exaggeration to say that long COVID-19 -- the long-term health consequences of COVID-19 -- is America's next big health crisis. Given that more than 30 million Americans have been infected with this virus, and given that the burden of long COVID-19 is substantial, the lingering effects of this disease will reverberate for many years and even decades. Physicians must be vigilant in evaluating people who have had COVID-19. These patients will need integrated, multidisciplinary care."

Researchers were even able to calculate the potential scale of the problems headed our way from the new study, warning at a wide range of side effects after surviving COVID-19. Issues from breathing problems to irregular heart rhythms, mental health issues like depression and anxiety, and even relativley minor-seeming complications like hair loss were catalogued as typical and part of the new norm.

Hossein Azarbad

"This study differs from others that have looked at long COVID-19 because, rather than focusing on just the neurologic or cardiovascular complications, for example, we took a broad view and used the vast databases of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) to comprehensively catalog all diseases that may be attributable to COVID-19," said Al-Aly, also director of the Clinical Epidemiology Center and chief of the Research and Education Service at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System.

In fact, the research showed that after surviving the initial infection beyond the first 30 days of illness, COVID-19 survivors had an almost 60 percent increased risk of death in the following six months when compared with the general population. That includes people whose COVID-19 infections were incredibly mild and required no hospitalization. At the six month mark though, excess deaths among COVID-19 survivors were estimated to be closer to eight people per thousand patients, a sharper decliner. Among patients who were ill enough to be hospitalized with their COVID-19 infections though, that number skyrocketed to an excess 29 deaths per 1,000 patients over the following six months.

"These later deaths due to long-term complications of the infection are not necessarily recorded as deaths due to COVID-19," Al-Aly said. "As far as total pandemic death toll, these numbers suggest that the deaths we're counting due to the immediate viral infection are only the tip of the iceberg."

Did you have COVID-19 and continue to experience lasting side effects and associated diseases? We'd love to hear your personal story in the comments section below.