Abstract:
The study was aimed to mention the epidemiology of smoking in Pakistani COVID-19 infected patients along
with the disease severity, oxygen dependency and fatality rate. A cross sectional epidemiological study was carried out
on 555 confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection. The median age was 47±16 years. 59% were male and 41% were
female. Most of the patients (97.5%) survived, while only 2.5% expired. 25.6% patients required the oxygen. Total 17
(3%) COVID-19 patients with age 20-75 years were identified as smokers. No mortality was observed in smokers. The
1.4% smokers presented with mild disease, 1.2% with moderate disease and 0.4% had severe disease. According to ChiSquare test, there existed an insignificant difference (p- value: 0.38649) between smokers and non-smokers in disease
severity levels. Smoking is a precursor for countless diseases, but it behaved differently in COVID-19 infected patients,
as its prevalence was significantly low. We found no significant variation of the disease severity among the smokers and
non-smokers. Profound experiments should be conducted to recommend whether nicotine can be used as a protective
agent to negate COVID-19 infection.
