Are Smokers More at Risk to Coronavirus Than Non-Smokers?

There are many questions being asked about coronavirus, with a pertinent question being how at risk are smokers when it comes to COVID-19. Research says that smokers are among the most at-risk group for coronavirus. 

Smokers Considered a High-Risk Group for COVID-19

According to Chinese researchers, around a quarter of patients who required life support or died from the virus were smokers. Only 11% of the patients who presented mild symptoms and didn’t need extra support were smokers. 

With that said, researchers from Wuhan completed research that appears to show that smokers are less likely to get the disease in the first place. They have a harder time with the disease and are more likely to die, but may not be as likely to catch it. 

The EU health regulator also stated that smoking increases the chances of complications during infection with the coronavirus. The body then admitted that there wasn’t much data on the subject right now. Doctors have called for further studies and trials to get a more accurate picture of the connection between smoking and coronavirus. 

Researchers with the Wuhan University Zhongman Hospital discovered only 1.4% of the 140 patients with coronavirus were smokers. The researchers noted in the journal Allergy that, of the patients, “there were only two current smokers and seven past smokers”. 

Three of those patients presented non-severe symptoms while the other six all had severe symptoms. The researchers said that there was no clear connection between smoking and coronavirus just yet, but that smokers would have a harder time if they caught the virus. 

The researchers also suggested that, contrary to what the NHS says, being asthmatic and having chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) were not risk factors for being infected by coronavirus. The research suggested that hypertension was the biggest risk factor, with 30% of coronavirus patients having high blood pressure. 

Different Studies Show Conflicting Data and Disparities

Doctors with the Central Hospital of Wuhan conducted another study that showed smokers were more likely to suffer from severe symptoms. The researchers looked at 78 patients with pneumonia caused by coronavirus. The patients were followed for two weeks. 

The researchers, led by Wei Liu, discovered that the patients who used tobacco were 14 times more likely to have their infection progress. Patients with high levels of C-reactive protein – a sign of inflammation – were ten times more likely to have the disease progress. 

The results of the study were published in the Chinese Medical Journey. The results of this study were backed up by research from The New England Journal of Medicine. The research, supported by the National Health Commission of China, analyzed over 1,000 coronavirus patients. 

The study showed that only 11.8% of the patients with non-severe symptoms were smokers. 16.9% of the patients who had severe symptoms were smokers. Just over a quarter of the patients (25.5%) who needed a ventilator, were sent to intensive care, or died were smokers. 

One thing to note about the study is that less than 15% of the patients involved in the study were known smokers, which is a huge disparity compared to the number of smokers in China as a whole. The World Health Organization say that approximately 300 million people in China are smokers. That figure is roughly a fifth of the total population in China and around a third of the total number of smokers in the world. 

The European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) announced recently that smokers are among the groups most vulnerable to coronavirus. Their announcement, however, comes with an admission that there still isn’t enough data on the topic.