Medical institute Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Montefiore Health System and the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) stated on Friday that the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City has caused an increase in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests and deaths.

Published online in JAMA Cardiology, the study found a three-fold increase in out-of-hospital non-traumatic cardiac-arrest cases in March and April 2020 versus same period in 2019. On 6 April 2020, cardiac arrests peaked at 305 cases, an increase of nearly ten fold over the same day one year earlier. The mortality rate for cardiac-arrest cases rose from 75% in 2019 to 90 % during the same period in 2020.

The study used data from the New York City emergency medical services system. The data was analyzed for patients 18 years or older with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest who received EMS resuscitation from 1 March 2020 when the first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in New York City through 25 April 2020 when EMS call volume had receded to pre-COVID-19 levels, revealed the partnership.

In addition to overwhelming pneumonia and acute respiratory failure, COVID-19 damages the lining of blood vessels, leading to blood clots that can trigger heart attacks even in people with no previous cardiopulmonary diseases, concluded the partnership.