Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist at the Yale School of Medicine, says he worries about two kinds of long COVID. There’s the obvious version where people suffer prolonged virus symptoms like fatigue, and a stealthier version in which people recover yet carry an added risk of blood clots and strokes.
He doesn’t want to panic people — most of us will probably be fine. But new studies confirm that some will develop an elevated risk of blood clots, strokes or heart attacks. Given that most people have had COVID by now, everyone should be more vigilant about the early warning signs such as chest pain, unusual swelling, numbness or weakness, or sudden changes in balance, speech or vision.
Scary reports started to surface in the spring of 2020 of young people suffering deadly strokes during or right after a COVID infection. Doctors were starting to suspect COVID was not just a respiratory disease but a blood vessel disease. Larger studies now back up their suspicions and showed that COVID infections elevated everyone’s risk. That explained why younger people who should have had almost no risk were showing up with strokes, but they were just the tip of the iceberg. Patients who already smoked or had high blood pressure or diabetes went from high risk to even higher.
