More than 145,000 Americans have perished from the pandemic, but doctors warn that an insidious side effect of the coronavirus crisis may be just as deadly. In a recent article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), physicians from the Tufts Medical Center in Massachusetts found that coronavirus phobia has caused many cardiac patients to avoid and delay crucial medical treatments or turn to unhealthy habits to allay their fears.

The stress and fear caused by the pandemic have also led to overeating and alcohol abuse, according to Today. These unhealthy habits, along with the dread of visiting healthcare experts or medical institutions, may cause more deaths than the virus itself.

A Daily Beast article stated that "while early fears of widespread death and overwhelmed hospitals have played an important role in sounding the alarm about this pandemic and motivated important social distancing measures, these fears have also caused substantial harm."

The Tufts doctors urged health officials that while emphasizing stay-at-home measures, they should also encourage patients to seek treatment for life-threating illnesses. According to the Detroit Free Press, during the pandemic, heart attack victims have died at home and stroke victims left symptoms go unchecked for too long. Experts said COVID-19 has people so scared that they are ignoring life-threating ailments that can be treated with the proper medical care.

Fear of the pandemic may even trigger cardiac events, according to The Daily Beast, which cited statistics gathered by Tulane Health Services Center in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina that showed cardiac cases tripled over the one-year period following the disaster.

"If the COVID-19 pandemic presents a similar hazard to the entire nation, it is likely we will see 1 million to 2 million additional coronary events that are directly attributable to the current crises," the doctors wrote, adding that this represents more than twice the number of cardiac events reported in 2019.

To combat the fear, the Tufts experts suggested that health officials remind the public that their risk of getting COVID-19 in a hospital setting is less than 1%, while the risk of dying from a heart attack is greater than 30% without critical care.

"To minimize the negative outcomes of this pandemic, we must keep patients from dying of fear — both of the pandemic and their fate in the hands of medical institutions," the doctors wrote. They added that this unrealistic fear is stopping patients from seeking the very care that could save their lives.