Heart failure patients scared to hug their children for fear of contracting Covid-19

Heart failure patient and advocate, Pauline O'Shea, pictured with her daughter Ali, says it is time to move high risk heart patients from the current category 7 to category 4 in the national Covid 19 immunisation plan.

Some heart failure patients have stopped hugging their children when they come home from school because they are afraid of contracting Covid-19 from them.

The Irish Heart Foundation said it had heard from several patients expressing their fears around close contact with their children.

Now, the foundation is calling for an “urgent review” of the vaccine priority list to include heart failure patients.

One of those who contacted the IHF was Pauline O’Shea from Ardnacrusha, Clare.

Ms O’Shea, now 47, was diagnosed with heart failure at age 38.

"Before my nine-year-old daughter returned to school this week, she wrote in her homework: ‘my mum has a heart condition and I’m worried I’ll give her Covid’," she said.

"This week alone, my children are in three different classrooms with anywhere from 10-30 children in each; that means I am indirectly exposed to up to 70 people – children, teens and young adults, any of whom might be carrying Covid 19."

Ms O’Shea had open-heart surgery in 2012 after developing spontaneous coronary artery dissection – a tearing of the wall of the artery.  

I have had three heart attacks, gone into cardiac arrest, been in ICU, on a ventilator, I don’t need to go back there with Covid.

Ms O’Shea said she had been in contact with another heart patient who has two children that change out of their school uniforms when they get home because they are scared of exposing their mother to the virus.

At present, younger people living with severe heart failure are not deemed at very high risk under the national immunisation programme.

Research from the UK shows the 30-day mortality rate of patients with acute heart failure nearly doubled during the pandemic. 

A Dutch study shows Covid 19 patients with severe heart failure are 37% more likely to die compared to other hospitalised Covid patients.  

HSE data to mid-December showed that of 1,866 Covid 19 deaths, 93% had a known underlying condition – and 41% of these had chronic heart disease, the most common type of condition.

The Irish Heart Foundation is calling on Health Minister Stephen Donnelly to review the Covid-19 vaccine prioritisation list. 

The Irish Heart Foundation’s medical director Dr Angie Brown said there was now "broad consensus among cardiologists and the HSE’s own National Heart Programme" that younger heart failure patients who are at very high risk from Covid, should be "vaccinated without delay".  

“Studies emerging on the impact of Covid on heart failure patients, in particular, are extremely worrying," she said.  

“We know that the National Heart Programme has challenged the prioritisation of heart failure patients and inpatients awaiting surgery. 

We are calling on Health minister Stephen Donnelly to order an urgent review of the priority level for these patients to ensure lives are not put at unnecessary risk.”