Severe Covid-19 risk with asthma and COPD lower than previously thought

The risk for people with asthma and other chronic respiratory diseases of severe Covid-19 is not as high as had been feared at the start of the pandemic, say researchers from the University of Oxford. Analysis of records from 8 million patients at 1,205 general practices in England found people with active asthma and severe asthma had 26% and 29% higher relative risks of hospital admission with Covid-19 and around 30% higher relative risk of admission to intensive care compared with matched patients with no underlying respiratory disease. However, this is lower than suggested by data collected between January and April 2020, which showed that COPD was associated with a 50% increased risk of hospitalisation and 54% increased risk of death from Covid-19. Furthermore, there was no evidence that asthma was associated with an increased absolute risk of death from Covid-19, and the risks appeared similar for all ethnicities, the researchers reported in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.