Obesity and Covid-19: The Clashing of Two Pandemics |Biomedgrid

The lethality of the COVID-19 pandemic is due, in large part, to the declining health of the world's population. Cava et al. [1] described 2020 as a collision between two pandemics, obesity, a chronic non-communicable disease, and the highly infectious corona virus disease (COVID-19). The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) for 2017-2018 estimated that 42.5% of US adults aged 20 and above were obese, with 9% severely obese, and another 31% overweight. Obesity is defined as an abnormal and excessive accumulation of fat that presents a risk to health [2]. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines obesity as individuals with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30kg/m2 or greater. In 2019, the global adult obesity rate was reported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to be approximately 13.2% [3]. However, with confinement and lockdowns over the past two years, it is likely to be much higher.