A study reveals that many unexplained deaths occurring outside the hospital during the epidemic are due to lung damage linked to the Covid-19 virus.
- Study shows Covid-19 link to many unexplained out-of-hospital deaths
- The rapid deterioration in the state of health of people infected but with few symptoms at the start could explain these deaths
The death toll from Covid-19 could be much higher. According to the results of a study published on May 28, 2020 in the European Journal of Heart Failure, the majority of unexplained deaths outside of hospital during the epidemic peak (March 23 to April 7, 2020) were caused by lung damage related to Covid-19. This work was carried out by members of the Paris Institute of Forensic Medicine, the Sainte-Anne Hospital – GHU Paris, the AP-HP Saint-Louis and Lariboisière hospitals, the University of Paris, from Inserm and CNRS.
Researchers analyzed post-mortem scans of people aged 27 to 99 who died outside of hospital during the Covid-19 pandemic. On these, they found signs of pulmonary infection linked to Covid-19, phlebitis of the lower limbs and proximal pulmonary embolisms responsible for the person’s cardiac arrest. For the last two, they estimate that there would have been three times more cases during the peak of the epidemic than during the whole of 2019.
14 times more requests for forensic autopsies
All of the patients in the study had seemingly mild symptoms – cough and/or fever – but their doctors had suspected infection with the virus. “Some symptoms of Covid-19 evolve very quickly, explains Jean-Daniel Gradeler, general practitioner in Saint-Privat-la-Montagne, in the North-East of France. There have been cases of people who were perfectly fine, but when they measured the oxygen saturation in their blood, they found that they had a catastrophic saturation.“The fact that some symptoms are imperceptible could therefore explain why these patients died outside the hospital.
Many sudden deaths were unexplained during this time. Doctors therefore often performed forensic autopsies. In total, this type of examination was requested 14 times more than in 2019. According to the study, a majority of these sudden deaths would be linked to a proximal pulmonary embolism. Hence the importance of not being alone at the time of the crisis, which was the case for most of the patients in the study. The authors also insist that preventing thrombosis could be life-saving in patients with symptoms of Covid-19.
.
