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Six months after being diagnosed with Covid-19, 1 in 3 patients also had experienced a psychiatric or neurological illness, mostly mood disorders but also strokes or dementia, a large new study shows. About 1 in 8 of the patients (12.8%) were diagnosed for the first time with such an illness, most commonly anxiety or depression. Compared to control groups of people who had the flu or other non-Covid respiratory infections, first-ever neuropsychiatric diagnoses were almost twice as high. (Cooney, 4/6)

A third of Covid-19 survivors were diagnosed with a neurological or psychiatric condition in the six months after being infected, according to the first large-scale research to compare the risks to other illnesses, including influenza. The University of Oxford study analyzed health records of 236,379 Covid-19 patients infected last year, according to a report in The Lancet Psychiatry journal. As might be expected, anxiety and mood disorders were the most common diagnoses, at 17% and 14% of patients respectively. But the study also found 7% of those made sickest by the virus had a stroke and 2% were diagnosed with dementia. (Rutherford, 4/6)

Anxiety and mood disorders were the most common diagnosis among those with Covid, and these were more likely to be down to the stress of the experience of being very ill or taken to hospital, the researchers explained. Conditions like stroke and dementia were more likely to be down to the biological impacts of the virus itself, or of the body's reaction to infection in general. (Schraer, 4/6)