People with dementia are twice as likely to get COVID, huge study finds

A study published in Alzheimer’s and Dementia indicates that people with dementia had a much higher risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2, and were significantly more likely to be hospitalized and die from COVID-19, compared with people without dementia. The study examined millions of medical records in the United States. Researchers adjusted for known risk factors for COVID-19, such as older age; living in a nursing home; and having such conditions as obesity, asthma, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, but still found that Americans with dementia were twice as likely to get COVID-19 as of late summer 2020. The study also found that Black people with dementia were nearly 3 times as prone to contracting the coronavirus compared with White people with dementia, which experts say reflects how people of color generally have been disproportionately affected during the pandemic. For the study, researchers analyzed electronic health records of 61.9 million Americans age 18 years and older from February 1 through August 21, 2020.