Coronavirus Risk Factors

Category: COVID-19 Comments: 0

Anyone can get COVID-19, and most infections are mild. The older you are, the higher your risk of severe illness.

You also a have higher chance of serious illness if you have one of these health conditions:

  • Chronic kidney disease
  • Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
  • A weakened immune system because of an organ transplant
  • Obesity
  • Serious heart conditions such as heart failure or coronary artery disease
  • Sickle cell disease
  • Type 2 diabetes

Conditions that could lead to severe COVID-19 illness include:

  • Moderate to severe asthma
  • Diseases that affect your blood vessels and blood flow to your brain
  • Cystic fibrosis
  • High blood pressure
  • A weakened immune system because of a blood or bone marrow transplant, HIV, or medications like corticosteroids
  • Dementia
  • Liver disease
  • Pregnancy
  • Damaged or scarred lung tissue (pulmonary fibrosis)
  • Smoking
  • Thalassemia
  • Type 1 diabetes
  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • Schizophrenia

Some children and teens who are in the hospital with COVID-19 have an inflammatory condition that doctors are calling multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children. Doctors think it may be linked to the virus. It causes symptoms similar to those of toxic shock and of Kawasaki disease, a condition that causes inflammation in kids’ blood vessels.

How Are Mood Disorders Linked to Severe COVID-19?

One large study reviewed 91 million people with mood disorders and other mental health conditions. It found that if you have preexisting mood disorders, you’re at a high risk for hospitalization or death but not necessarily severe COVID-19.

According to the study, there are several socio-economic reasons why preexisting mood disorders can increase your chances for hospitalization and death if you get COVID-19.

This includes:

  • Poverty
  • Lack of access to preventative health care
  • Ability to understand health recommendations
  • Lack of access to affordable health care
  • Living in tight spaces or facilities like nursing homes, homeless shelters, prisons, or psychiatric inpatient units
In addition, people living with mental health conditions may have certain mood disorder symptoms that can interfere with our ability to care for ourselves and be engaged in our health. This can make it hard to effectively follow health behaviors like maintaining social distance or staying in quarantine to reduce the spread of the infection.

Moreover, people with mental health and mood disorders are also more likely  to have conditions like diabetes and heart problems that are major risk factors for severe COVID-19.

Another study looked at 7,348 people with preexisting mood and psychiatric conditions with confirmed COVID-19 infections. It found those living with schizophrenia were more than twice as likely to die from COVID-19. Study experts noted that possible delay in access to health care and other unknown or monitored health risk factors may have led to the higher death rate.

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