Read on Twitter
1/ New study looking at risk factors for hospitalisation and critical illness from COVID-19. Thread. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.08.20057794v1
2/ Age is by far the biggest risk factor for hospitalisation. Morbid obesity increases the risk six fold. For critical illness, the RRs are 2.57 and 1.73 respectively.
3/ Tobacco use doesn’t get a mention in the abstract, but the results show that ever-users of tobacco are significantly less likely to be hospitalised with the virus.
4/ Ever-users of tobacco were no more likely to become critically ill with the virus than never-users.
5/ The authors don’t split up the former and current users to give relative risks, but current users seem to be even more underrepresented in coronavirus wards and ICUs than former users. The smoking rate in New York is 14%.
6/ The authors say that this finding might seem surprising, but shouldn’t necessarily be seen as such. (Note that they wrongly say there’s no association between tobacco use and hospitalisation. In fact, there’s an inverse association.)
7/ These findings are in line with data from China showing smokers underrepresented for coronavirus in hospital. https://www.qeios.com/read/article/541
8/ And from the USA more generally.
9/ And from France and Germany (although the latter is a relatively small study) where the smoking rate is around 23%. h/t @KlausKblog
10/ Meanwhile, Public Health England claims that smokers who get COVID-19 are *14 times* more likely to become critically ill based on a single study involving just five smokers. I guess that’s what they consider a noble lie. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/smokers-at-greater-risk-of-severe-respiratory-disease-from-covid-19
