Sharon Levy is Director, Adolescent Substance Use and Addiction Program, and Associate Professor in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. She posted a piece in Harvard Health Publishing to warn young adults are greater risk from vaping during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sharon backs her claim up with data from a study published August 11, 2020 in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
One in Three Young Adults Are at Greater Risk from Vaping in U.S.
The researchers report a significantly greater likelihood of COVID-19 diagnosis among adolescents and young adults in their study as follows:
1… The disease is five times more likely among regular users of e-cigarettes only
2… This increases to seven times among regular-dual-users also smoking cigarettes
These probabilities reduced after 30 days abstinence. However, they were still 2.6 and 4.7 times greater for e-smoking and dual smoking subjects respectively. Sharon Levy interprets this as meaning smoking and vaping double the number of young adults in the at-risk category. If young adults are at greater risk from vaping we wanted to know how this happens.
Hand to Mouth Transmission Helps Explain How this Happens
Food and Drug Administration confirms cigarette smoking has immediate health implications. We won’t go into those here, except to mention some vaping mixtures may contain similarly harmful chemicals.
The team at Journal of Adolescent Health concurs with this, but has an intriguing second explanation. We already that COVID-19 spreads through repeated touching hands to mouths, they observe.
Smokers and vapers repeatedly do this as a natural part of the inhalation process. Adolescents and young adults also commonly share vaping devices, and we’ve heard cigarettes too, on occasions. Therefore it seems possible they could be spreading the virus this way. If it is true that young adults are at greater risk from vaping, then we would like to see greater publicity surrounding this concern.
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Preview Image: No Smoking No Vaping
