COVID-19 Could Cause Sudden Strokes In Young Adults

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While many young adults have been shaking off orders to stay home noting that they’re not medically fragile and don’t have underlying conditions that could cause them to contract coronavirus, there’s a new report coming out that should make you tighten up. CNN reports that COVID-19 appears to be causing sudden strokes in adults in their 30s and 40s who are not otherwise especially sick, doctors reported Wednesday. The docs add that COVID-19 can cause the blood to clot unnaturally and could cause a stroke.

“The virus seems to be causing increased clotting in the large arteries, leading to severe stroke,” Dr. Thomas Oxley, a neurosurgeon at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, told CNN.

“Our report shows a seven-fold increase in incidence of sudden stroke in young patients during the past two weeks. Most of these patients have no past medical history and were at home with either mild symptoms (or in two cases, no symptoms) of Covid,” he added. “All tested positive. Two of them delayed calling an ambulance,” Oxley said noting that some people are hesitant to go to the hospital because they’ve heard of overcrowding at hospitals.

Oxley told CNN that he and his colleagues typically record fewer than two strokes per month in people under the age of 50, but in a two-week period during the pandemic, they treated five.

He also encouraged young adults to use the mnemonic device “FAST” if they think they’re having a stroke: “F for face drooping, A for arm weakness, S for speech difficulty and T for time to call 911.”

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