Is weight a factor for severe Covid? It's not clear!

[Ocelot II]

19. Here are some data:

Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-2019), caused by the highly pathogenic virus SARS-CoV-2, demonstrates very heterogenous clinical severity, ranging from asymptomatic to devastating forms connected with the development of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) accompanied by extensive pulmonary fibrosis (PF). There is rapidly emerging evidence highlighting obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2D) as comorbidities of SARS development in COVID-19 (Drucker, 2020; Fk et al., 2020; Muniyappa and Gubbi, 2020; Orioli et al., 2020). Clinical studies conducted in different countries demonstrated that obesity and T2D are linked to severe forms of COVID-19 in all ethnic groups. A prospective cohort study on 2741 patients hospitalized in the US health care system revealed that obesity was one of the most important factors associated with hospitalization and critical illness (Petrilli et al., 2020). Another US study on 5700 patients hospitalized with severe forms of COVID-19 reported that many of them had either obesity (41%) or T2D (33%) (Richardson et al., 2020). According to results obtained in China, individuals with obesity compared to patients with normal weight demonstrate significantly more severe forms of COVID-19 (Cai et al., 2020). A meta-analysis based on 33 studies revealed that T2D is associated with mortality and severity of COVID-19 with pooled odds ratios of 1.90 and 2.75, respectively (Kumar et al., 2020). A UK study with 6142 patients indicated that diabetes is an independent prognostic factor in the COVID-19 critical care (Dennis et al., 2020). A retrospective study on 1158 patients hospitalized in Kuwait revealed that patients with morbid obesity and T2D were much more likely to be admitted to the intensive care unit, demonstrating odds ratios of 5.18 and 9.38, respectively (Al-Sabah et al., 2020). Statistically significant correlations were found between the officially reported obesity prevalence and the corresponding number of total deaths of patients with COVID-19 in a number of different countries (Ekiz and Pazarlı, 2020). A strong negative correlation was found between age and BMI in 265 patients admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU), and it was concluded that obesity can shift severe forms of COVID-19 to a younger age (Kass et al., 2020). A single-center retrospective study from Germany based on computed tomography (CT) measurements of visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue in 30 COVID-19 patients (13 of which had severe forms of disease), revealed that an increase of visceral fat area by one square decimeter was associated with 22.5-fold increased risk to be admitted to ICU and 16.1-fold increased risk for mechanical ventilation (Petersen et al., 2020). Also relevant to this discussion, SARS-CoV-2 clearance is delayed in patients with diabetes (Chen et al., 2020a; Chen et al., 2020b), and T2D as a single comorbidity negatively impacts the severity of COVID-19 (Guo et al., 2020). Additionally, a multi-center retrospective study demonstrated that the high fasting blood glucose is an independent predictor for mortality in patients with COVID-19 without previous diagnosis of diabetes (Wang et al., 2020).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7492082/

This isn't my opinion. It's a peer-reviewed study from a reputable scientific source.