Cancer Patients Face High Mortality from COVID-19. Largest Study of Cancer Patients with COVID-19 Provides Guidance on How to Protect This Vulnerable Population.
May 1, 2020—(BRONX, NY)—People with cancer who develop COVID-19 are much more likely to die from the disease than those without cancer, according to physician-researchers at Montefiore Health System and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The study, published today in the online edition of Cancer Discovery, is the largest so far to assess outcomes for patients with cancer who have also been infected with COVID-19.
“Our findings emphasize the need to prevent cancer patients from contracting COVID-19 and—if they do—to identify and closely monitor these individuals for dangerous symptoms,” said Vikas Mehta, M.D., M.P.H., a co-lead author of the study, a surgical oncologist at Montefiore, and associate professor of otorhinolaryngology—head and neck surgery at Einstein. “We hope that our findings can inform states and communities that have not yet been so severely struck by this pandemic about the unique vulnerability cancer patients face.”