Obesity is a driving factor in virus deaths, finds new study
The report suggests that 90% or 2.2 million of the 2.5 million deaths from the pandemic disease so far are in countries with high levels of obesity; coronavirus cases up 9% in Europe
The majority of global COVID-19 deaths have been in countries where many people are obese, with coronavirus fatality rates 10 times higher in nations where at least 50% of adults are overweight, a global study found on Thursday.
The report, which described a “dramatic” correlation between countries’ COVID-19 death and obesity rates, found that 90% or 2.2 million of the 2.5 million deaths from the pandemic disease so far were in countries with high levels of obesity.
The study analysed the COVID-19 death figures from Johns Hopkins University in the United States and the World Health Organisation’s Global Health Observatory data on obesity.
Strikingly, the authors said, there is no example of a country where people are generally not overweight or obese having high COVID-19 death rates.
“Look at countries like Japan and South Korea, where they have very low levels of COVID-19 deaths as well as very low levels of adult obesity,” said Tim Lobstein, an expert adviser to the World Obesity Federation and visiting professor at Australia’s Sydney University who co-led the report.
“They have prioritised public health across a range of measures, including population weight, and it has paid off in the pandemic.”
By contrast, the report found that in the United States and Britain, for example, both COVID-19 death rates and obesity levels were among the highest.
The United Kingdom has the world’s thirdhighest coronavirus death rate and the fourthhighest obesity rate — 184 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 and 63.7% of adults overweight, according to WHO data — followed by the United States, with 152.49 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 and 67.9% of adults overweight.
“We’ll bounce back beter together,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson told overweight Britons on Thursday, championing his own weight loss and health eating diet to try to persuade others to get in shape to reduce coronavirus risks.
Ater being hospitalised with COVID-19 last year, Johnson has oten spoken about how he believes his weight was behind how severely ill he became and how since then he has started a new exercise regime and no late-night cheese diet.
“I’ve been doing a lot, in fact everything I can, to lose weight and to feel fiter and healthier. And what I’ve been doing is I’ve been eating less carbs, avoiding chocolate, no more late night cheese, I’ve been geting up early to go for runs and the result is that I actually have lost some weight,” he said on Twiter, unveiling a new scheme to get people fiter.
“What we want to do is encourage another 700,000 people around the country who have the kind of problems that I have had to do the same thing, so we’ll be not just fiter but also healthier and happier and we’ll bounce back beter together.”
COVID-19 cases rose 9% last week over a 53-country region of Europe, snapping a six-week run of declines, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Thursday as its European chief insisted that countries need to get “back to the basics.”
Dr Hans Kluge said more than 1 million cases were tallied over the last week in the region. He said the resurgence was particularly noticeable in central and eastern Europe, but some Western European countries saw increases as well.
More than half of the region noted increasing numbers of new infections, he said.
Alluding to the “solidarity” shown by some European countries that have taken in patients from hard-hit neighbors, Kluge said “over a year into the pandemic, our health systems should not be in this situation.”
“We need to get back to the basics,” he told reporters from WHO Europe headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Klug called for measures like increased vigilance to fend off variants, improved testing and isolation of cases, more efforts to counter public “pandemic fatigue” and an accelerated rollout of vaccines.
Countries should not agree bilateral deals that undermine the international Covax COVID-19 vaccine procurement facility, but they also have a responsibility to vaccinate frontline workers switly, Kluge said.