If you’re obese or overweight, you may want to read about this latest study from the Netherlands about COVID-19. Everybody hates wearing masks and the lockdowns during the pandemic were stressful. Now it appears that a person’s body weight may affect the severity of symptoms for those who becomes infected by COVID-19.
According to a study by researchers at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands, COVID-19 patients who are overweight or obese are more likely to develop more severe infections compared to patients of healthy weight. Moreover, they require oxygen and invasive mechanical ventilation more often.
The study was published in the journal Diabetes Care.
Increased Severity But Not Mortality
The study was based on 7,000 patients from eleven different countries in 18 different hospitals. In this group, about 35 percent of the patients were overweight and around 31 percent were obese. The obese patients required oxygen more frequently and were 73 percent more likely to require invasive mechanical ventilation. Surprisingly, these overweight and obese patients were not more likely to die from COVID-19 than their healthy weighted counterparts.
It is painfully clear from this large study that being overweight can make someone infected with COVID-19 have more severe symptoms. If you fall into this category, please take care of yourself and take all precautions to lessen your chance of getting infected by COVID-19.
