People With Bug Of COVID Are At Risk Of Dying For Up Two Years After Catching It- Study Warns

By Babatunde Solanke with agency reports

Experts have come out to issue an urgent ‘death’ warning to anyone who has had Covid in the last two years.

New research reveals that anyone infected with the COVID are at an increased risk of dying for up to two years after catching it.

According to the research, most Britons have already had COVID  since the outbreak of pandemic, with many being infected more than once.

Following the United Kingdom’s mass vaccine rollout, many people in Britain have a level of protection against the virus but now scientists in the US warn that those who have had the virus are at a higher risk of dying than those who have not.

The new study, published in Nature of Medicine, discovered that as far as two years after infection people who were hospitalised with the virus have a greater chance of death.

The same group also faces a higher risk of severe health issues like lung disease and diabetes, as well as general fatigue, or long Covid. After two years following infection, the risk of death decline, the study shows.

For patients who weren’t hospitalised by the killer virus, it takes just six months for the risk of death to no longer be significant, it added. But this doesn’t mean they are spared some pretty nasty side effects.

They could still be at risk of over 20 medical conditions such as cardiovascular issues and blood clotting trouble, diabetes, gastrointestinal problems and kidney disorders.

“A lot of people think, ‘I got Covid, I got over it and I’m fine. Maybe you’ve forgotten about the Covid… but Covid did not forget about you. It’s still wreaking havoc in your body,” study author, Doctor Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist from Washington University, said

In the study, scientists looked at the medical records of almost 140,000 US veterans diagnosed with Covid during the early days of the pandemic, comparing their health data against a control group of almost six million not known to have been infected. But the study also highlights that most veterans are male and older.

The latest research comes as a new Covid variant is causes an increase in cases. BA2.86 is a new strain of Omicron, and comes shortly after the EG5.1, or ‘Eris’ variant. According to UK Health Security data, Eris currently accounts for around 15 per cent of all cases in the UK. Between August 6 and August 12, 6,289 people had a confirmed positive test result in England.

This shows an increase of 17.4 per cent compared to the previous seven days. Experts have suggested this sudden surge in cases could be because of poor weather in July prompting people to gather indoors without ventilation to keep them safe.

Omicron is a variant of SARS-CoV-2 first reported to the World Health Organization by the Network for Genomics Surveillance in South Africa on 24 November 2021. It was first detected in Botswana and has spread to become the predominant variant in circulation around the world.