Another 44,000 people in the country have also used the pandemic as an opportunity to quit smoking, according to the analysis by the organization Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and University College London (UCL), which used a YouGov survey of more than 10,000 people as the basis for their findings.
The campaign calls on older smokers in particular to take advantage of the pandemic as an opportunity to quit smoking, since Covid-19 appears to be generally more severe in older patients. People in the 16-29 age group have quit smoking at more than double the rate of smokers over the age of 50.
The UK government has reported that smokers may be at increased risk for severe symptoms associated with Covid-19. However, the science on the different impacts on smokers and nonsmokers is still inconclusive.
Smoking is the leading cause of preventable diseases, which cause cancer, heart and lung diseases. ASH said in a press release on Wednesday that smokers who are hospitalized with Covid-19 are more likely to experience serious outcomes than nonsmokers.
“My message for today’s smokers is, please don’t wait. Whether you are healthy now or no longer well due to smoking, today is the day to quit. It can transform your life,” said Dr. Ruth Sharrock, an expert in respiratory medicine, was quoted as saying in the ASH statement.
Dr. Sarah Jackson, principal investigator for the UCL Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group, cautioned that the findings relate only to short-term smoking cessation.
“Given that the long-term success rate of quitting smoking tends to be low, it is highly unlikely that this will translate to one million fewer smokers in the UK, which would be a large decrease in prevalence,” he said. .
“At this relatively early stage of the pandemic, we do not yet have a wealth of information on its impact on smoking and smoking cessation behavior. Other data sources do not yet show evidence of a large decline in smoking prevalence; It will be interesting to see if a substantial decrease in smoking becomes apparent in the coming months, and if so, whether this translates into a sustained reduction in the number of smokers in the UK, “he added.
John Britton, director of the UK Center for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies at the University of Nottingham, welcomed the analysis as “rare good news that emerged from the Covid-19 crisis.”
“The estimate is based on a small sample, and of course it’s based only on the self-report, so we don’t know how trustworthy this finding is. But even if the actual figure is only half as big, ‘only’ half million – that would represent a major step forward in UK public health, “he said.
The UK has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 290,000 confirmed cases and more than 45,000 deaths, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.
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