Fear of the coronavirus is leading people with life-threatening emergencies, like a heart attack or stroke, to stay home when ordinarily they would have rushed to the emergency room, preliminary research suggests. Emergency rooms have about half the normal number of patients, and heart and stroke units are nearly empty, according to doctors at many urban medical centres. What should have been an easily treated heart attack had progressed to a life-threatening disaster. A hospital in Jaipur, India, for example, that Sharma owns, treated 45 heart attack patients in January, he said. And, he said, even if some people changed their habits, studies have failed to find any immediate effects of short-term lifestyle changes on heart attack rates.

Source: bd News24 April 26, 2020 04:30 UTC