ICMR findings soon on Covid-heart attack link

New Delhi: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is likely to soon disclose the results of a study that it conducted to evaluate a sudden increase in cardiac events after Covid-19.

India's premier institute has sent the results of its study for peer review and will soon make it public, a person in the know told ET. He did not reveal details about the study which was launched in March.

Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya said on Sunday that the ICMR had done a detailed study and advised that those who had recovered from severe Covid infections should not exert themselves.


According to people in the know, researchers at the All India Institute of Medical Science in Delhi are carrying out a review of data generated from cases of death due to heart attacks.

Earlier, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare had asked the ICMR "to give evidence-based clarification based on the findings of its planned studies on this".

Lok Sabha MP Rajiv Ranjan Singh had on March 17 asked the health ministry about rising cases of heart attacks in India after the pandemic.

On the sidelines of an event in his native district of Bhavnagar in Gujarat on Sunday, Mandaviya said the ICMR had done a detailed study on the subject. "That detailed study has recommended that those who had severe Covid should desist from extra labour; that they should stay away from continuous labour, running, exercise, for a year or two, so that heart attacks can be prevented," Mandaviya said.

Several cases of people dying due to heart attacks have been reported recently with many linking these deaths to Covid or the vaccine.

As reported by ET earlier, heart attack and brain stroke have been the two-main causes for hospitalisation and death among those who received Covid-19 vaccine, the expert group investigating serious adverse events after immunisation had disclosed.