CHARLOTTE, N.C. — We have been talking a lot about heart disease and heart conditions after Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin's incident on the field against the Bengals.
Heart issues have been at the forefront of people's minds. But are we seeing more hearted-related medical issues because of the pandemic?
The CDC's latest statistics show about 697 thousand people died in the united states from heart disease in 2020. That's one out of every five deaths.
THE QUESTION:
Are there more heart disease-related deaths now than before the pandemic?
OUR SOURCES:
THE ANSWER:
Yes, there are more heart diseased related deaths than before the pandemic.
WHAT WE FOUND:
According to the American Heart Association, From 2010 to 2019 U.S. heart disease death rate fell by 9.8%, but in 2020, the year the pandemic hit, it rose by 4.1%.
"Any data that you might see that cardiac deaths have gone up during the COVID-19 pandemic is true," Dr. Kohli said.
Research from Cedars Sinai found that deaths from heart attacks rose significantly during pandemic surges. In the first year of the pandemic, the number of heart attack deaths increased by 14%. By the second year, it rose about 29.9% for adults 25 to 44. Many social media posts suggest it's the COVID-19 vaccine that's behind these increases. However, Dr. Kohli says the research does not back that claim; the American Heart Association said out of the nearly six million people who received the Pfizer or Moderna first and second shot, only 32 people needed to be hospitalized for myocarditis.
"This has nothing to do with the vaccine in fact, this has the opposite it has to do with the infection itself, and it has to do with the fact that people weren’t getting timely care during the pandemic," Dr. Kohli said.
Contact Meghan Bragg at mbragg@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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