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The Covid-19 pandemic has accentuated the risk behaviors of patients with chronic diseases and, in the long term, this could overload health services in countries, reveals a report by the World Health Organization (WHO) published on Friday .
According to the WHO report, the second on the evolution of non-communicable diseases, the pandemic and the measures adopted by countries to contain it, in particular confinement, have increased certain risk behaviors, such as lack of physical activity, unhealthy diets. and alcohol abuse.
The assessment made by the WHO, quoted today by the Efe news agency, says that obesity, tobacco and alcohol consumption increase the possibility of the most serious manifestations of Covid-19, a respiratory disease caused by a new coronavirus (type virus). .
Examples of non-communicable (or non-infectious) diseases are chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular and kidney disease, hypertension, and asthma.
According to previous studies, diabetics are three times more likely to have severe symptoms or die from Covid-19.
In the case of hypertensive patients, the risk is 2.3 times higher, while in cardiovascular patients it is 2.9. People who have suffered a stroke are 3.9 times more likely to have more severe manifestations of Covid-19 or to die.
For WHO, “it is likely that the pressure on health services will increase in the long term” due to the “possible increase in cardiovascular and respiratory complications” as a result of Covid-19.
The Covid-19 pandemic has already claimed at least 869,718 deaths and infected more than 26.3 million people in 196 countries and territories, according to a report by the French news agency AFP.
In Portugal 1,833 people died of the 59,457 confirmed as infected, according to the latest bulletin from the Directorate General of Health.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
