Study links long COVID to 3,500 deaths

Long COVID played a part in at least 3,500 deaths in the US, according to a study published Wednesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

While the tally represents 0.3 percent of more than 1 million deaths linked to COVID-19 in the US, it shows that lingering symptoms after infection eventually can be fatal.

It is the first official nationwide examination of whether long COVID or related terms appear in official American death records. The researchers analyzed 1,021,487 death certificates in every state and Washington DC, dated from Jan 1, 2020, to June 30, 2022, noting that, "Described changes in mortality trends, death counts, and rates may be underestimates."

"It's not one of the leading causes of death, but, considering that this is the first time that we've looked at it and that long COVID is an illness that we're learning more about day after day, the major takeaway is that it is possible for somebody to die and for long COVID to have played a part in their death," Farida Ahmad, a health scientist at the CDC who led the study, told The New York Times.

Long COVID is a health condition that includes a wide range of new, returning or ongoing health problems that people experience after being infected with the virus that causes COVID-19.

Long COVID symptoms include difficulty breathing or shortness of breath, cough and chest pain. Long COVID symptoms can last indefinitely and can affect every organ system, according to the CDC.

Some experts also say this finding is probably a significant undercount, considering that up to 30 percent of people who get COVID-19 go on to have long-term symptoms, according to the CDC.

Ziyad Al-Aly, who wasn't involved in the new CDC research and teaches epidemiology at Washington University in St. Louis, told the Los Angeles Times that the CDC report offers "a gross underestimate" of the deaths likely attributable to long COVID.

"Viruses have long-term consequences," he said. "We're pretty good at capturing acute disease," he said. But researchers and medical professionals have a "major, major blind spot" when it comes to anticipating and detecting the longer-term fallout of a viral infection.

Some people who aren't hospitalized for an initial infection but get long COVID go on to develop heart problems, studies show. Long COVID wouldn't necessarily be captured on those death certificates, David Putrino, director of rehabilitation innovation for Mount Sinai Health System, who wasn't involved in the research, told CNN.

"We read every single day about people who have previously been healthy, get COVID, recover and then have a heart attack or stroke or pulmonary embolism," added Putrino, noting that the research may also miss people with long COVID who died by suicide as the condition probably wouldn't be listed on their death certificates.

Nearly 57 percent of long COVID-related deaths occurred among people age 75 and over. Nearly one-third of death certificates that had mentioned long COVID had listed as the underlying or primary cause of death a non-COVID-19 condition, such as heart disease, cancer or Alzheimer's disease, the CDC data show.

Most of the people who died from long COVID were white, older and male, the report says.

About 78.5 percent of the deaths were among white people. Black people made up 10.1 percent of the deaths, followed by Hispanic people at 7.8 percent.

"These differences may be due to higher mortality among non-Hispanic black and Hispanic populations, resulting in fewer COVID-19 survivors left to experience long COVID conditions," according to the study.