The World Health Organization (WHO) had considered senior citizens and individuals with underlying conditions such as diabetes and heart disease as the most vulnerable and high-risk groups of getting infected with coronavirus. A new study reveals that one in three young adults are vulnerable to the virus too.
More and more young adults are getting infected as the United States continues to count high daily rates of new cases and deaths, namely Florida, California, and Texas. A team from UC San Francisco Benioff Children's Hospital published their findings in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
Analyzing the data of more than 8,000 men and women between to ages of 18 and 25 revealed that 30% of females and 33% of males have medical vulnerability. One of the prominent health risks young adults have come from the effects of smoking cigarettes.
In mid-April, almost 9 out of 100,000 patients were young adults while 128 out of 100,000 patients were over the age of 65. At the end of June, young adult patients per 100,000 people rose to 34.7, which is a 299% increase.
Dr. Sally Adams of the UCSF Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine shared that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) included pre-existing medical conditions of asthma, immune system diseases, diabetes, heart conditions, and smoking in the vulnerability group. Numerous studies on the effects of e-cigarettes, tobacco, and cigars associate adverse effects on both the immune and respiratory systems.
According to the CDC, around 200 youth below 18 years old become daily cigarette smokers and carry the habit into adulthood. All young adult smokers are 100% vulnerable to severe coronavirus.
Young Adults Smoking
The team noted that 16.1% of 6,741 non-smokers have medical vulnerability. The high-risk group increased to 31% of all 8,400 young adults including smokers.
'Recent evidence indicates that smoking is associated with a higher likelihood of COVID-19 progression, including increased illness severity, ICU admission or death,' Adams explained. 'Smoking may have significant effects on young adults, who typically have low rates for most chronic diseases.'
Unlike previous trends, more young adults are smoking compared to adolescents. Data from the National Health Interview Survey revealed that within the last month, 11% of young adults had smoked a cigarette, 4.5% smoked cigar products and 7.2% smoked e-cigarettes.
The current rate of people with asthma is at 8.6 percent while the number of smokers has risen to 19.8%. Moreover, 1.2% of smokers have diabetes, and less than 1 percent had a liver condition or a heart condition.
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Signficant Risk Factor
'The risk of being medically vulnerable to severe disease is halved when smokers are removed from the sample,' said Dr. Charles Irwin Jr. from the UCSF Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine. 'Efforts to reduce smoking and e-cigarette use among young adults would likely lower their vulnerability to severe disease.'
Dr. James Gill from Warwick Medical School, who was not part of the recent study, said, 'smoking is a significant risk factor for coronavirus infections and, in fact, infections generally. There are many interlocking factors as to why smoking reduces the body's ability to fight an infection - from the ability to get oxygen from blood to tissues, through to the increased levels of carbon monoxide in the blood. People can make a huge contribution to their own protection against COVID-19 by stopping smoking - even if it is simply during this pandemic.
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