- What we've noticed in COVID-19 is that there's about a 1% risk of patients suffering a stroke while they're infected with COVID-19. And before we talk about the specifics, I think it's really important to define what a stroke is. In order to do that, I have a model of a brain here, and as you can see, the model has all of these folds, and each one of these is responsible for doing something. So for example, this part of the brain and this fold specifically here controls movement of one side of the body. This fold, for example, controls speech or language. Now, if a blood vessel that supplies this part of the brain is blocked off, and that part of the brain is not receiving blood, that's exactly what a stroke is, and that is the definition of a stroke. Now, in COVID-19, we've noticed that the patients who we're treating and who are coming in with strokes tend to be younger. And what I mean by that is, the typical age for a stroke is anywhere in the 60s and 70s, but we've encountered a lot of patients who come in in their 40s and more so in their 50s. The other difference is that COVID-associated stroke or patients with COVID-associated stroke are less likely to have what we call traditional risk factors. And what I mean by that are the typical risk factors that we think of, like hypertension or high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, high cholesterol. Patients with COVID-associated stroke are younger, and they're less likely to have these traditional risk factors. Now, the good news is that, as I said earlier, stroke seems to affect a very, very small percent of people with COVID-19, and that's less than 1%. But we are still working on trying to decipher why it is that COVID affects the younger and also more healthy individuals. What we're starting to come to, however, is that, with COVID-19 infection and with the pneumonia that people suffer, they also have a heightened inflammatory state in their body. And what I mean by inflammatory state is that the body is trying to fight off the virus. And in doing that, all of the chemicals and things in the blood that help in that fight can make people more likely to develop clots. And when people develop clots in their blood, those clots can lodge themselves and block off critical arteries that supply the brain, hence, leading to a stroke. If somebody with COVID-19 starts to experience symptoms of a stroke, the most important thing to do is to call 911 immediately. During the COVID-19 surge, we actually measured how many patients with stroke came to the hospital, and it was about a 50% drop in the number of patients that we were able to treat for their stroke. This is an important thing to talk about, because we don't want people staying at home with stroke symptoms. And if they were to come to the hospital, we could potentially treat them and limit any long-term disability that they would otherwise have from their stroke. Now, here at the Montefiore Comprehensive Center for Stroke Care, the first comprehensive stroke center from Northern Manhattan to Albany, and one of only 200 such centers nationwide, we treat mild strokes, all the way out to the most severe strokes, but we only have about 4 1/2 hours to do that. And we know that the quicker people come to the hospital, the less likely they will have long-term disability from stroke. And that's true, no matter if they have COVID-19 or not. The quicker we can treat, the better people will do in the long run. Early on, ahead of the COVID-19 surge, we implemented measures to prevent COVID-19 infection in people coming into the hospital for emergencies, like stroke. Those measures have remained in place today, including COVID-free zones for treatment.