Coronavirus: from ‘Covid toe’ to brain death, blood clots could be the real Covid-19 killer
- Clotting disorders in Covid-19 patients were noted as far back as February, but doctors are now looking more closely at the damage they can cause
- Deadly blockages can occur deep in the lungs and also damage other vital organs such as the heart, brain, kidneys, liver, bowel, and other tissues
Doctors around the world are noting a raft of clotting-related disorders – from benign skin lesions on the feet sometimes called “Covid toe” to life-threatening strokes and blood-vessel blockages. Ominously, if dangerous clots go untreated, they may manifest days to months after respiratory symptoms have resolved.
The clotting phenomenon is “probably the most important thing that’s emerged over the last perhaps month or two,” said Mitchell Levy, chief of pulmonary critical care and sleep medicine at the Warren Albert School of Medicine at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
It’s not unusual for infections to raise the risk of clotting. The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, caused by a novel strain of influenza that killed some 50 million people worldwide, was also linked to downstream damage from clots that could end lives dramatically.
Viruses including HIV, dengue and Ebola are all known to make blood cells prone to clumping. The pro-clotting effect may be even more pronounced in patients with the coronavirus.
