A new study, published in the journal JNCI Cancer Spectrum, has revealed that patients with inactive cancer who are not undergoing treatments at present also have a significantly higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19.

Investigators assessed the records of over 4,800 patients tested for COVID-19 from the Penn Medicine BioBank and evaluated the association between cancer status and COVID-19 outcomes. Among the 328 cases that were positive through June 2020, the medical history of 67 (20.7%) of them had a cancer diagnosis, with 80.6% having solid tumor malignancy and 73.1% having inactive cancer. Patients with COVID-19, both with active cancer and inactive cancer, were found to have higher rates of hospitalizations in comparison with patients who did not have cancer (55.2% vs. 29%), admission to intensive care unit (25.7% vs. 11.7%), and 30-day mortality (13.4% vs. 1.6%)… (HT – ANI, January 25, 2021)