The researchers say there are also concerns that a vaccine may be less effective for overweight people due to a weakened immune response.
Scientists at UNC are reviewing data from 75 studies conducted between January and June with 400,000 coronavirus patients.
They found obese people a 46% greater risk of catching Covid-19 than non-obese people, and a 113% increased risk of hospitalization.
For example, “the prevalence of overweight individuals in hospitals was much higher than that in non-hospitals,” the researchers wrote. They cited a report of 5,700 obese patients in New York City, in which 42% of hospital Covid-19 patients were obese compared to only 22% of the city’s population.
“People who are overweight are also more likely to have physical illnesses that make fighting this disease harder, such as sleep apnea, which increases pulmonary hypertension, or a body mass index that increases difficulties in a hospital setting with intubation,” Melinda Beck, a professor at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health who worked on the study, said in a statement.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 42% of the U.S. adult population was considered obese in 2017-2018.
As research continues into a potential coronavirus vaccine, Beck pointed to previous studies that found a link between adult obesity and a less effective flu vaccine. They suggested that the same could be true for Covid-19.
“However, we are not saying that the vaccine will not be effective in populations with obesity, but rather that obesity should be considered as a changing factor to consider for vaccine testing,” she said. “Even a less protective vaccine will still offer some level of immunity.”
Greater evidence shows that obesity increases the risks of hospitalization, seriousness of illness and sometimes death with all viral respiratory infections, the researchers wrote, “increasing the chance that obesity can also independently increase the risk of COVID-19.”
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