Smokers are less hit with COVID19 infections

In a letter to Daily Mail, U.K., world-famous artist David Hockney suggests smoking is protecting people against the coronavirus.

‘Could it not be that smokers have developed an immune system to this virus? With all these figures coming out, it’s beginning to look like that to me,’ he says in the letter.

Many dismissed his claims as rubbish. But now, a leading infectious disease expert at University College London, Professor Francois Balloux, says there is ‘bizarrely strong’ evidence it could be true.

Data from multiple Chinese studies shows that only a small portion of COVID19 hospital patients were smokers.

Another study, by America’s Centers for Disease Control suggests only 1.3 per cent of 7,000 people tested positive for coronavirus were smokers.

The study also found that the smokers stood no greater chance of ending up in hospital or an ICU, says the Daily Mail. 

For the medical world, this is still a mystery.

But the fact remains there are lesser smokers who got infected by the deadly disease. However, the newspaper did not publish any indication of the rate of death among the smokers admitted at the medical institutions.

Some researchers are suggesting that smoking can reverse one of the ways in which COVID19 damages the lungs.

But others are saying the damages done to the lungs from smoking may cause organ failure in those infected.

The World Health Organisation and governments in some countries urged people to stop smoking in the wake of the coronavirus attack.