August 11, 2020

expert reaction to youth vaping and COVID-19

A study, published in Journal of Adolescent Health, has looked at possible associations between smoking, e-cigarette use and COVID-19.

Prof Peter Hajek, Director of the Tobacco Dependence Research Unit, Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), said:

“The study found that many more vapers reported being tested for Covid. This could be because almost all vapers are smokers or ex-smokers, and so more likely to have symptoms such as cough; but open internet surveys are vulnerable to all sorts of biases.

“More importantly, the proportion who tested positive was 14% in never users and 13% in people who ever used an e-cigarette. More testing identifies more cases, but the study results in fact do not suggest any increase in risk of Covid in e-cigarette users.”

* ‘Association Between Youth Smoking, Electronic Cigarette Use, and Coronavirus Disease 2019’ by Shivani Mathur Gaiha et al. was published in Journal of Adolescent Health on 11th August 2020.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2020.07.002

Declared interests

Prof Hajek: “None to declare”