New York, Jun 10 (IANS): Heart failure patients who are unvaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, are three times more likely to die if infected with the virus compared to fully boosted heart failure patients, according to a new research.

The study, published in the Journal of Cardiac Failure, is important since many heart failure patients are hesitant to get the Covid vaccine due to fear of myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle.

While the condition is a rare side effect of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines it is a more common complication of Covid-19 infection, said researchers at the Mount Sinai Hospital in the US.

The researchers found the unvaccinated and partially vaccinated patients were three times more likely to die from Covid-19-related illness than fully vaccinated and boosted patients.

Further, unvaccinated and partially vaccinated patients were 15 per cent more likely to be hospitalised if infected with the virus and nearly twice as likely to be admitted to the ICU when compared to fully vaccinated and boosted patients.

"The findings further emphasise that heart failure patients need to take vaccines seriously, since they have worse outcomes if infected with Covid-19, and stresses the importance of receiving the full Covid-19 vaccination dosage, especially since our previous work shows those with heart failure are 2.5 times more likely to die from the virus," said corresponding author Anuradha Lala, Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

The team looked at electronic records of 7,094 patients with a heart failure diagnosis (not including heart transplant and left ventricular assist device patients) who had office visits, emergency department visits, or hospitalizations between January 1, 2021, and January 24, 2022.

Of that group, 2,200 (31 per cent) were fully vaccinated with two doses, 1,053 (14.8 per cent) were fully vaccinated and had also received one booster; 645 (9.1 per cent) were partially vaccinated with only one dose, and 3,196 (45 per cent) were unvaccinated.