Introduction:
The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020 (1). As of mid-August 2020, there have been about 21,250,743 confirmed cases worldwide with 766,648 deaths reported across the globe, based on the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University (2). This novel coronavirus has been shown to have cardiovascular manifestations in the form of arrhythmias (3), conduction disturbances (4), myocarditis (5), stress cardiomyopathy (6), myocardial injury (7) and myocardial ischemia or infarction from increased microvascular and/or macrovascular coagulopathy (8, 9). However, in addition to these direct effects, we are now starting to recognize indirect cardiovascular effects of COVID-19 in the form of increased incidence of Takutsobo cardiomyopathy in patients without any evidence of coronavirus infection. Based on a retrospective cohort analysis from Ohio, acute coronary syndrome resulting from stress cardiomyopathy was found to be much higher during the pandemic (about 8%) period, compared to similar times periods before the pandemic (about 1.5-2%) (10). This increase in stress cardiomyopathy is likely resulting from increased emotional and psychological stress related to social isolation, which is further exacerbated by the economic consequences of the shut-down. In this article, we present a case series of two such patients diagnosed with stress cardiomyopathy caused by psychological trauma due to the ongoing pandemic.