According to researchers, nearly 90 percent of coronavirus deaths have occurred in highly obese countries, which now want overweight people to get priority vaccinations.
According to a World Health Organization-sponsored study published by the World Obesity Federation on Thursday, death rates were 10 times higher in countries such as the US, where at least 50 percent of the total population is overweight.
[This] should act as a wake-up call for governments worldwide, ”said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, according to the Financial Times. “The correlation between obesity and death rates from COVID-19 is clear and compelling.”
According to the study, which represents medical professionals from 50 regional and national obesity associations, weight is now believed to be the second-largest predictor of serious illness from the virus after age.
For the report, researchers examined mortality data from Johns Hopkins University and data from the WHO Global Health Observatory, which found that a total of 2.2 million of the 2.5 million deaths worldwide were in countries with high rates of obesity.
Researchers found no examples of high COVID-19 death rates in countries where less than 40 percent of the population was overweight, according to the report.
For example, Vietnam has the lowest coronavirus death rate in the world and the second lowest number of overweight people, with only 0.04 deaths per 100,000 from COVID-19 with 18.3 percent of overweight adults, according to WHO data.
In contrast, the UK has the third highest COVID-19 death rate in the world and the fourth highest rate of obesity, with 184 deaths per 100,000 and 63.7 percent of overweight adults.
The US saw about 152 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 and has an obesity rate of 68 percent.
Tim Lobstein, the WOF’s senior policy adviser and the report’s author, called the rise in national obesity-related death rates “dramatic.”
Meanwhile, according to a study released last month, Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine may be less effective at protecting obese people.
Researchers in Rome found that obese people who received two doses of the vaccine generated a weaker antibody response, according to a report on the pre-print server Medrxiv.
The study, which has not been peer-reviewed, evaluated the effect of the vaccine on 248 health workers seven days after the final dose, the Guardian reported.
National Cancer Institute Regina Elena researchers found that those considered obese – defined as a body mass index greater than 30 – produced about half the amount of antibodies compared to people of healthy body weight, the Guardian reported.
It is currently unknown what level of antibodies is required to neutralize the virus, but experts fear that a reduced antibody response may hinder inoculation efforts.