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President Trump tweeted early Friday that he and First Lady Melania Trump had tested positive for coronavirus.
The news came hours after the White House announced that senior aide Hope Hicks tested positive for the virus after traveling with the president several times over the last week. Trump, 74, is at a higher statistical risk of serious complications from the virus that has killed more than 200,000 people in the U.S., analysis of hospitalization data in several countries have shown over the last six months. Being obese is another potential complication for the president.
According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention: Having obesity increases the risk of severe illness from COVID-19, may triple the risk of hospitalization due to a COVID-19 infection, is related to immune function, and reduces lung capacity and reserve and can make ventilation more difficult. As BMI increases, risk of fatality from COVID-19 increases, it added.
“People in their 60s or 70s are, in general, at higher risk for severe illness than people in their 50s,” the federal agency said. However, the president is not in the highest-risk age group: “The greatest risk for severe illness from COVID-19 is among those aged 85 or older. There are also other factors that can increase your risk for severe illness, such as having underlying medical conditions,” the CDC said. “As you get older, your risk of being hospitalized for COVID-19 increases.”
The president does have something on his side in his regard: He is in the lowest-risk category in terms of obesity. Trump has a body mass index of 30.1 based on a height of 6 foot, 3 inches, and a weight of 243 pounds, as written in a memo from his doctor Dr. Sean Conley last year. That gives him a body mass index of 30.1 and puts him into the lowest of three stages of obesity, according to the CDC’s official definition.
BMI calculates weight, muscle, fat and bone in relation to height and gender. A BMI of 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight and those with a BMI of 30 or more are considered obese; morbidly obese people have a BMI of 44.9 or more. “Patients who received invasive mechanical ventilation were more likely to be male, to have obesity,” according to this study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Age is another risk factor. Research on COVID-related fatalities show the majority of those people are over 70. Genes in the body that appear to be a major factor giving SARS-CoV-2, the disease that causes COVID-19, access to the heart cells become more active with age, according to research published in August in the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology. The coronavirus spike protein binds to certain enzymes and proteins in the heart that are more common as we age.
Inflammation in older people can be more intense, causing organ damage, according to Johns Hopkins University. “Lung tissue becomes less elastic over time, making respiratory diseases like COVID-19 a particular concern for older people. The CDC added, “Eight out of 10 COVID-19-related deaths reported in the United States have been among adults aged 65 years and older.” However, the risk of dying from COVID-19 increases more for those who are 85 and older.
It takes significantly longer to recover from the disease for older people, studies show, but the virus can be pernicious in how it impacts people, and what symptoms — if any — continue to linger. For instance, Britain’s Prince Charles, 71, made a full recovery from the virus. Most people recover within a few weeks, Mayo Clinic researchers recently wrote, “but some people — even those who had mild versions of the disease — continue to experience symptoms after their initial recovery.”
