Patients with blood cancer have a much higher chance of developing severe illness if they contract coronavirus than people with other forms of cancer, a study has found.

The paper by researchers at the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham concluded that blood cancer patients admitted to hospital had 57 per cent higher odds of severe disease, and that cancer patients over the age of 80 had the highest frequency of fatality.

The findings, published in Lancet Oncology by the UK Coronavirus Cancer Monitoring Project (UKCCMP), also showed that after accounting for age and gender, patients with blood cancers who had recent chemotherapy had an increased risk of death during Covid-19-associated hospital admission.

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