The United States reported a record number of new COVID-19 cases for the seventh day in a row on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally, while the number of deaths surged to their highest daily count since August.
With case numbers still being filed by a handful of states, the U.S. had reported at least 134,000 new infections by late Tuesday. It has reported an average of 120,000 cases every day for the past week.
The daily death toll stood at 1,450, the first time it has risen above 1,400 since mid-August. Hospitalizations of infected people also continued to climb rapidly, reaching 61,471 by late Tuesday, the highest ever during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, a study showed that anxiety, depression and insomnia were most common among recovered COVID-19 patients in the study who developed mental health problems. The researchers from Britain’s Oxford University also found significantly higher risks of dementia, a brain impairment condition.
“People have been worried that COVID-19 survivors will be at greater risk of mental health problems, and our findings … show this to be likely,” said Paul Harrison, a professor of psychiatry at Oxford.
Doctors and scientists around the world urgently need to investigate the causes and identify new treatments for mental illness after COVID-19, Harrison said.
“(Health) services need to be ready to provide care, especially since our results are likely to be underestimates (of the number of psychiatric patients),” he added.
The study, published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal, analysed electronic health records of 69 million people in the United States, including more than 62,000 cases of COVID-19. The findings are likely to be the same for those afflicted by COVID-19 worldwide, the researchers said
In the three months following testing positive for COVID-19, 1 in 5 survivors were recorded as having a first time diagnosis of anxiety, depression or insomnia. This was about twice as likely as for other groups of patients in the same period, the researchers said.
The study also found that people with a pre-existing mental illness were 65% more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than those without.
Mental health specialists not directly involved with the study said its findings add to growing evidence that COVID-19 can affect the brain and mind, increasing the risk of a range of psychiatric illnesses.
