Neurologic and Psychiatric Outcomes in 236,379 Survivors of COVID-19
TAKE-HOME MESSAGE

• The authors of this retrospective cohort study and time-to-event analysis evaluated data from the electronic health records of 236,379 patients diagnosed with COVID-19. They found that COVID-19 was robustly associated with a higher risk of neurologic and psychiatric disorders in the 6 months after diagnosis. Incidence and hazard ratios were both greater in individuals who had been hospitalized, admitted to an intensive treatment unit, or had encephalopathy during their illness.
• The findings indicate that COVID-19 is associated with substantial rates of neurologic and psychiatric diagnoses over the 6 months that follow infection. In particular, patients who had encephalopathy or intensive care admission should receive neurologic follow-up.

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Level of Protection Against Reinfection With SARS-CoV-2
The take-home messages for primary care clinicians are as follows:

• Infection with SARS-CoV-2 results in future protection that lasts at least 3 months and appears not to decline over 6 months.
• The protection is comparable to that attained through vaccination.
• There is reduction in protection for our older patients; prioritization of vaccine to individuals aged ≥65 years is reasonable, even when there is a past history of COVID-19.
• Additional research is needed to understand the longer-term durability of protective immunity following infection.

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Death Certificate-Based ICD – 10 Diagnosis Codes For COVID-19 Mortality Surveillance
TAKE-HOME MESSAGE

• To assess whether deaths were appropriately attributed to COVID-19, this CDC study reviewed ICD-10 codes listed on 378,048 death certificates from 2020 that reported COVID-19 as the cause of death. Of the 357,133 death certificates that listed additional ICD-10 codes, the authors deemed that the co-occurring diagnosis was a plausible chain-of-event condition and/or significant contributor in 97% of the deaths rather than an independent, alternative cause of death.
• The authors concluded that death certificate–based COVID-19 mortality surveillance during 2020 was accurate and emphasize that high-quality mortality reporting must remain a priority moving forward –  Emmett Kistler, MD

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