Effect of smoking on infection with COVID-19

The appearance of the pandemic (COVID-19) encourage researchers to carry out a lot of studies to study the effect of different factors on the severity of the infection; among them are smoking, chronic diseases, age, gender. The aim of the current study was to study the significance of smoking, chronic disease, gender and age factors with the severity of infection with Coronavirus and the need to ICU. The study was carried out in Imam Hussein Teaching Hospital in Karbala, Iraq on both genders, from January to April 2021. The collected information from patients included gender, age, smoking, chronic diseases (high blood pressure, diabetes, other diseases) and the needs for ICU. The result was presented in five tables; the significance between the factors were considered important at p 0.001. In conclusion, several important points were the outcomes of the current study: smokers are highly risked with Coronavirus; no significant correlation was found between gender and medication with the risk of COVID-19; a significant correlation was observed between the duration of smoking and severity with COVID-19.