Even in Mild Cases, Covid-19 Could Damage the Heart

The coronavirus and the heart have a complicated relationship

Early on in the pandemic, it became clear that a large percentage of the deaths caused by Covid-19 were related to cardiovascular problems. In March, a study revealed that more than 25% of people hospitalized for the novel coronavirus had signs of heart damage, and nearly a third of those people had no underlying cardiovascular disease. A more recent evaluation of autopsies performed on people who died from Covid-19 found inflammation and injury to the heart in 86% of cases.

Perhaps even more alarming, evidence of heart damage has not only been reported in serious cases of Covid-19, but also in mild or asymptomatic ones. One study looking at college athletes who’d tested positive for the virus but had mild or even no symptoms found signs of inflammation in cardiac MRI scans in 15% of the athletes. And researchers from Germany found that 78% of people who’d recovered from Covid-19 showed similar abnormalities on MRI scans of their hearts taken two months later.