MONDAY, June 7, 2021 — Hospitalized patients with active cancer are more likely to die from COVID-19 than those who’ve survived cancer and patients who’ve never had cancer, a new study shows.

Researchers analyzed the records of nearly 4,200 patients hospitalized at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Of those patients, 233 had an active cancer diagnosis.

In-hospital rates of death from COVID-19 were about 34% among those with active cancer but fell to about 28% among those with a history of cancer or with no history of cancer, the study found.

Those with active blood cancers had the highest risk of death from COVID-19, according to the study published recently in the journal Cancer.

Receiving anti-cancer therapy — including chemotherapy, molecularly targeted therapies and immunotherapy — within three months before hospitalization was not linked to a higher risk of death, the researchers said.

“Among those hospitalized with active cancer and COVID-19, recent cancer therapy was not associated with worse outcomes,” said study senior author Dr. Daniel Becker, a medical oncologist at NYU Langone.

Therefore, “people with active cancer should take precautions against getting COVID-19, including vaccination, but need not avoid therapy for cancer,” Becker said in a journal news release.

The findings also highlight the importance of COVID-19 vaccination for cancer patients, according to the journal’s incoming editor-in-chief, Dr. Suresh Ramalingam. He’s deputy director of the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University in Atlanta and assistant dean for cancer research at the university’s School of Medicine.

Posted: June 2021