An opinion article from Dr Austin Jeans, team lead for Kufema’s Medical Advisory Committee.
Over the past several weeks many countries of the world have studied their individual pandemics. It has become very clear that the ‘enemy’ in this war, the novel coronavirus 2019, is a highly contagious pathogen but even more importantly we have learned that it’s lethality is largely targeted at people who have a combination of older age and the presence of chronic metabolic disease. By this we mean underlying health conditions principally obesity, metabolic syndrome (prediabetes) and type 2 diabetes.
In the context of COVID19, chronic metabolic disease is the leading cause of death!
It may not be that someone with obesity, prediabetes or diabetes is more likely to catch the viral infection but once infected then their chances of developing severe COVID19 with complications is substantially higher. This is a critical concept to understand because it lies at the heart of what we can do to help ourselves reduce our individual risk of being hospitalised or dying from this coronavirus infection.
Download the full article in PDF format below.
