Ana içeriğe atla
Doctor's Note: Why Are Smokers More Vulnerable To Coronavirus?
A doctor explains why smokers are more likely to contract respiratory illnesses.


Smoking is one of the leading causes of death in the world, killing more than eight million people a year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Now, it is thought that smoking may also make people more vulnerable to developing serious complications if they catch coronavirus.
In the United Kingdom, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, has said: "It is abundantly clear from the research into previous coronaviruses that smoking makes the impact of a coronavirus worse."
We do know that smokers contract more respiratory illnesses, including the common cold which is also a coronavirus, than non-smokers. They also tend to have a higher rate of bacterial pneumonia and tuberculosis. During the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak in 2012, smokers were found to be more likely to die than non-smokers if they caught the virus. 
Furthermore, smokers are twice as likely as non smokers to contract influenza and have more severe symptoms. 
However, the evidence has been less clear when it comes to the relationship between smoking and COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, specifically.
There have been some concerns that smokers are more likely to contract the virus because of the action of putting your hand to your mouth or using unwashed, contaminated hands to roll cigarettes which can increase the transmission of the virus from hand to mouth.
Some smoking products such as water pipes can involve sharing mouthpieces and hoses, which could also facilitate the transmission of COVID-19.
However, in a study of China's outbreak in the New England Journal of Medicine, it was found that fewer than 15 percent of the patients with COVID-19 were current or former smokers. Given the number of smokers in China - roughly one-fifth of the population - this might imply that smokers are not necessarily at a higher risk of catching it.
There is, however, evidence to suggest that smoking increases the severity of the virus if you catch it. The largest study looking at 1,099 patients in China, found that smokers were 1.4 times as likely to have severe symptoms and 2.4 times more likely to be admitted to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU), need ventilation or die compared with non-smokers who caught coronavirus.
A further small study of 78 people with COVID-19 also found a statistically significant higher proportion of smokers in the group whose condition adversely progressed compared with the group that showed improvement or stabilisation. 

Yorumlar

Yorum Gönder

Bu blogdaki popüler yayınlar

Why COVID-19 makes a compelling case for the wider integration of blockchain

Why COVID-19 Makes A Compelling Case For The Wider İntegration Of Blockchain The COVID-19 crisis has revealed a general lack of connectivity and data exchange built into our global supply chains. Future resiliency will depend on building transparent, inter-operable and connective networks. When it became clear that many of us would soon be working from home, a majority took a cursory glance at their home office set-ups and decided it needed upgrading. What ensued was an unanticipated rush and surge of online orders for office desks, chairs, lamps and computer hardware. But such was the sudden spike that it has unsurprisingly caught suppliers large and small unprepared, off guard and exposed gaping holes in their ability to track purchases from one end of their supply chains to the other. Some customers, who have spent no small amount on revamping their home offices are still waiting to do so, without the consolation of being able to see where their orders are, or when they...
Yorum Gönder
Devamı

Covering the coronavirus pandemic: CNN correspondents reflect on how we got here

Covering the coronavirus pandemic: CNN correspondents reflect on how we got here Atlanta (CNN) As the entire world grapples with the effects of the coronavirus outbreak, it is easy to lose sight of how we got here. There are not many news events in recent memory that have come close to the far-reaching implications in terms of our public health, social interactions, and the global economy; life as we know it has been altered. From the beginning, CNN journalists have covered this unprecedented story from all corners of the globe. Three months since we heard the first whispers of a strange respiratory illness emerging in China, this is the story of a story  from those who have witnessed and reported on it firsthand. Wuhan: Ground Zero On the final day of 2019, the World Health Organization receives word of a pneumonia-like disease in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. According to Wuhan Municipal Health, the cases occur between December 12 and December 29. The...
Yorum Gönder
Devamı

Wuhan Officials Have Revised The City's Coronavirus Death Toll Up By 50%

Wuhan Officials Have Revised The City's Coronavirus Death Toll Up By 50% China has revised its official death toll from the novel coronavirus, raising the number of fatalities attributed to the pandemic by more than a third. Officials in Wuhan, where the virus was first reported late last year, on Friday added 1,290 coronavirus deaths to the city's toll. They also added 325 confirmed cases to the city tally. The total number of cases recorded in the city now stands at 50,333, with 3,869 deaths. The previous reported death toll for Wuhan was 2,579  so the revised figure marks a 50% increase in the number of deaths in the city from coronavirus. As of April 17, China's National Health Commission had reported 3,342 deaths nationally, before the revised Wuhan figures were published. Officials explained that the deaths had initially gone uncounted because in the early stages of the pandemic some people died at home, overwhelmed medics were focu...
Yorum Gönder
Devamı