In most recent news, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 73% of nurses who have been hospitalized from COVID-19 had obesity. In addition, a recent study found that obesity could interfere with the effectiveness of a COVID-19 vaccine. ...snip... Initially physicians believed that having obesity increased only your risk of getting sicker from COVID-19, not your chance of being infected in the first place. Now, newer analysis shows that not only does obesity increase your risk of being sicker and dying from COVID-19; obesity increases your risk of getting infected in the first place.
In March 2020, observational studies noted hypertension, diabetes and coronary artery disease as the most common other conditions—or co-morbidities—in patients with more severe COVID-19 disease. But it was the editors of Obesity journal who first raised the alarm on April 1, 2020 that obesity would likely prove to be an independent risk factor for more severe effects of COVID-19 infection.
Additionally, two studies including nearly 10,000 patients have shown that patients who have both COVID-19 and obesity have a higher risk of death at days 21 and 45 compared to patients with a normal body mass index, or BMI. ...snip... And doctors sometimes don't know how or when to prescribe medications for patients with obesity. For example, eight FDA-approved weight loss medications are on the market, but only 2% of eligible patients receive prescriptions for them from their physicians.
