Obesity implications on SARS-CoV-2 infections' prevalence, hospitalizations, critical care needs, fatalities & vaccination rates: A public health crisis.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has appropriately become the focus of attention and claimed the lives of 757,663 Americans as of November 12, 2021 [1]. Several comorbidities including hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory system disease, and obesity significantly increase the risk of severe COVID-19 infection [2,3]. Obesity, defined as a body mass index (BMI) ≥30 kg/m2, affected 42.4% of adults and 19.3% of children from 2017 to 2018 and continues to rise in the United States (US) [4,5]. Currently, obesity is known to be a risk factor for death and intubation among other complications in those who are diagnosed with COVID-19 [6,7].

According to a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report assessing COVID-19 infections from December–March 2020, the majority of COVID-19 infections were among patients who were obese, despite this cohort comprising less than half of the overall study population (Table 1) [8]. Additionally, COVID-19 patients with a BMI ≥30 kg/m2 comprised the majority of patients who were hospitalized (Fig. 1), admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) or underwent invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) measures (Fig. 2), and suffered in-hospital deaths (Fig. 3) [8]. Evidently, patients who are obese represent a high-risk group for severe COVID-19 illness and may warrant additional consideration for targeted interventions.