As more Americans anxiously wait their turn to get the COVID-19 vaccine, people are discovering that smokers are one of the priority groups for vaccination.
Some don’t agree with the guidance and have expressed their frustrations on social media. But health experts say the rationale is clear.
“I could see why people would feel as if that would be unfair but people who are smokers are in general at higher risk for getting sicker when they develop COVID-19,” said Dr. Samuel Kim, a thoracic surgeon at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.
A study, published Jan. 25 in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Internal Medicine, found that people who smoke or who have smoked in the past are more likely to be hospitalized or die from COVID-19 than people who haven’t smoked.
Smoking doubles the risk of developing a severe case of coronavirus and needing hospitalisation, a new study claims.
The research provides the first conclusive evidence, based on real-world data, that being a smoker puts individuals at higher risk of severe disease than non-smokers.
It found smokers are 14 per cent more likely to have the three main symptoms of coronavirus: fever, persistent cough and shortness of breath.
But smokers are also at 50 per cent greater risk of developing more than ten symptoms at once including cough, fever, loss of smell, loss of appetite, diarrhoea, fatigue, confusion or muscle pain than people who do not smoke.
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When people look back, COVID-19 will be what defines 2020 and that applies to UCLA, just like everywhere else. From forcing us to shift to remote learning, move all but the most essential jobs off campus and ultimately close the campus to the public, the pandemic remade life in ways we couldn’t have imagined.
But as difficult as the challenges were, Bruins everywhere responded with the resilience, creativity and ingenuity that embody our values.
Scientists, doctors and scholars continued to pursue the research that helped the public better understand the virus.
Health care workers put themselves on the line day after day to care for and comfort the sick.