COVID-19 and Vaping
A new paper looking at COVID-19 and vaping rounds off a year where many sought to demonise electronic cigarettes yet shows no association between ecig use and contracting the virus
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by Dave Cross
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Vaping is widely accepted to be far less dangerous than smoking and yet it still became a key concern as the COCID-19 pandemic grew. Many public health bodies failed to report facts and it came down to Public Health England to offer some clear guidance [link].
Dimitra Kale, Aleksandra Herbec, Olga Perski, Sarah Jackson, Jamie Brown and Lion Shahab conducted an ongoing investigations as the months rolled by to see if there was an association between vaping and being diagnosed as having contracted the virus or vapers suspecting they had caught it.
The authors found there was no difference between never vapers, current vapers, and ex-vapers. They also discovered that around 50% of the vapers surveyed had changed their vaping behaviour since the pandemic struck. Finally, with those who reported an increased desire to quit vaping, they all said it was due in part to fear of the disease.
- 17.4% of vapers quit because of fears of contracting COVID-19
- 40.7% of quitters were considering taking up vaping again
- 48.3% of vapers did not change how they vaped
- 42% increased their consumption of eliquid during the first lockdown
- 9.7% decreased the volume of juice they used
The Health Behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic (HEBECO) study looked at data provided by 2791 adults in the United Kingdom, 75% of which were never-smokers/never-vapers.
They self-reported data on “sociodemographic characteristics, diagnosed/suspected COVID-19, vaping status, changes in vaping, and motivation to quit vaping since COVID-19”.
Ex-vapers considering taking up vaping again were doing so because they reported being “bored”, “struggling with cravings”, and “feeling stressed”.
The team concluded: “Among UK adults, self-reported diagnosed/suspected Covid-19 was not associated with vaping status. Half of current vapers changed their vaping consumption since Covid-19, with the majority reporting an increase, and a minority was motivated to quit due to Covid-19.”
In Germany, the City of Essen established a Task Force to collect data during the outbreak. Its findings prompted Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos to write: “Bloomberg should immediately hire witch hunters to discredit the German scientists who dare report that smokers were 72% less likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 in Essen. This battle is between science and public health disgrace.”
Related:
- “Associations between vaping and Covid-19: cross-sectional findings from the HEBECO study” by Dimitra Kale, Aleksandra Herbec, Olga Perski, Sarah Jackson, Jamie Brown and Lion Shahab – [link]
- “A model to identify individuals with a high probability of a SARS-CoV-2 infection”, Kowall, et al. – [link]
Photo Credit:
Photo by Evgeni Tcherkasski on Unsplash
Virus image by dianakuehn30010 from Pixabay
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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