‘He has come back from the dead’: Chevy Chase spent eight days in a medically induced coma during Covid pandemic.

Chevy Chase endured a “potentially fatal” heart failure that led to him being put into an induced coma amid the global health crisis, per details from a new documentary project about the American actor and comedian.

As documented in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the legend of films such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who emceed the Oscars on two occasions, remained in care for five weeks in the hospital.

“He wasn't right, and he was unable to describe to me what was wrong. So, we go to the ER. His heart gave out. During those years he was drinking, he got cardiomyopathy; which is when the heart muscles get weaker, and they can’t pump as much blood out with each beat.”

Physicians subsequently induced him into a coma for more than a week, before advising his child, Caley: “His return is uncertain. We are unsure how present he’ll be. Prepare yourselves for the worst.”

“Upon waking, all he was able to do was use his voice,” she added. “He has practically been resurrected.”

The actor personally has said that he has experienced recall difficulties since his hospitalisation, and in the project he cannot remember some of his past on-set and backstage controversies, including a physical altercation with fellow comedian Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live backstage area.

The comedian noted he was “upset” by his exclusion from the 50th-anniversary show of SNL this year, at which he was in the crowd but not on stage.

“To be frank, it was disappointing,” he said. “I'm only now voicing this. But I assumed that I could have been on the stage too with all the other actors. When co-stars Garrett and Laraine Newman were called up, I was curious as to why I didn’t. No one asked me to. Why was I overlooked?”

The 82-year-old, almost died in 1980 when he was shocked by electricity on the set of Modern Problems, an accident which triggered a period of depression.