Covid-19 patients have an elevated risk of death for at least 18 months after they got infected, researchers warned on Thursday.

Covid patients were more likely to develop numerous cardiovascular conditions compared to uninfected participants, which may have contributed to their higher risks of death, according to the study of nearly 160,000 participants published in Cardiovascular Research, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology.

“The findings indicate that patients with Covid-19 should be monitored for at least a year after recovering from the acute illness to diagnose cardiovascular complications of the infection, which form part of long Covid,” said Professor Ian CK Wong of the University of Hong Kong, China. Compared to uninfected individuals, the likelihood of Covid-19 patients dying was up to 81 times higher in the first three weeks of infection and remained five times higher up to 18 months later. Compared with the two uninf