Serious Covid cases caused by one of just four diseases

The vast majority of people who suffered a severe Covid-19 infection had one of just four health problems.

Nearly 90 percent of people who needed hospital care were either obese, had high blood pressure (hypertension), were diabetic or had suffered from serious heart problems, including heart failure.

Of these, obesity was the single biggest risk, accounting for around a third of all hospital cases, researchers from Tufts University discovered, after assessing the records of 906,000 people who needed hospital care for their Covid infection.

They reckon that at least 64 percent of all serious Covid cases might never have happened if people were healthier and were less obese or didn’t have type 2 diabetes, the ‘lifestyle’ disease caused by diet.

A vaccine is no silver bullet, and the emphasis still needs to be on better diets and healthier lifestyles. Researcher Dariush Mozaffarian said: “We know that changes in diet quality alone, even without weight loss, rapidly improves health within just six to eight weeks.”

In their analysis, the researchers discovered that 30 percent of the cases they reviewed were linked to obesity, 26 percent to hypertension, 21 percent to diabetes and heart failure was associated with 12 percent of the 906,000 admissions.

From that, they calculated that 64 percent of Covid cases needing hospital care might never have happened or, at least, would have been a far milder infection. Even reducing the extent of each of these problems by just 10 percent would have resulted in 11 percent fewer hospitalizations.

Race and age also played their part. For instance, 8 percent of the cases were due to diabetes among the under-50s but accounted for 29 percent of cases in those aged 65 and older. This wasn’t the case for obesity, which was responsible for severe Covid cases across all age ranges.

Ethnicity was also a factor. Diabetes was associated with a severe Covid reaction in 25 percent of white people over the age of 65, 32 percent of black patients, and 34 percent of Hispanics.

Black people were also more likely to suffer the worst from Covid across all age ranges, followed by Hispanics.

(Source: Journal of the American Heart Association, 2021; doi: 10.1161/JAHA.120.019259)

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