Coronavirus vaccine might not be effective on obese Americans

The entire globe is currently dealing with the deadly coronavirus pandemic. Amidst the number of deaths and infections, people across the globe, especially in America are waiting for the vaccine for COVID-19. In the US alone about 4.6 million people have been infected and about 155,500 have succumbed to the virus. But apart from the pandemic, America has already been dealing with another epidemic, long before coronavirus had arrived.

Since years, the scientists have known about the fact that the vaccines that have been made to protect against the diseases like hepatitis B, tetanus, influenza and rabies could be less effective in the obese adults than in the general population. This makes the obese people more vulnerable to infections and illness. This forces some reason to believe that the upcoming COVID-19 vaccines would be no different. Raz Shaikh, one of the associate professors of nutrition at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill said that it is going to be tough to have a COVID vaccine that would be tailored for the obese.

There are about 107 million American adults who are obese and it will be tough for them to get back to work and resume in their everyday lives, if the coronavirus vaccines would not be effective enough for them. It was in the early pandemic time in the month of March a Chinese research had suggested that the obese Chinese patients of coronavirus were more likely to die that the ones who were leaner. This has put the future of the obese population in danger as the US has the maximum number of obese people in the globe.

New Jersey, New York and other places in America have their ICUs filled with patients and the Federal Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have warned that obese people with the body mass index of 40 or more or are about 100 pounds overweight are at high risk of becoming severely ill with coronavirus. 9 percent of the American adults call under this category.

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