Trump’s age, other factors, put him at higher risk of serious illness from COVID-19
President Donald Trump confirmed early Friday morning that he and first lady Melania Trump tested positive for COVID-19. His age, sex, and weight puts him at a higher risk for getting seriously ill from the virus, medical experts say.
Trump is experiencing mild “cold-like symptoms” and “seemed lethargic” at a fundraiser he attended on Thursday, The New York Times reported. The president tested positive after senior aide Hope Hicks, who was traveling with the president Wednesday, was confirmed to have COVID-19 as well, McClatchy News reported.
Trump — who is 74 years old, obese, and male — has a higher risk for serious illness because of those factors.
Eight out of 10 coronavirus deaths in the U.S. have been adults 65 years and older, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People between 65 and 74 are also five times as likely to be hospitalized and 90 times as likely to die from the virus, compared to those between 18 and 29 years old, the CDC said.
Neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta said on CNN that “the odds are very much” in Trump’s favor for recovery.
“Given the President’s age and his preexisting conditions illnesses, he’s going to be at increased risk,” Gupta said. “The odds are very much in his favor. I don’t want to unsettle people too much with this. You know, greater than 90%, 95% that he will get through this, still.”
The president is just over the threshold for obesity at 6 feet, 3 inches tall and 244 pounds, according to a June report from Dr. Sean Conley, Trump’s physician. That means Trump has a body mass index of 30.5.
Having a BMI over 30 is considered obese and “increases your risk of severe illness from COVID-19,” the CDC said. Obese people are also three times as likely to be hospitalized for the coronavirus compared to those without conditions.
Men are more likely than women to die of COVID-19, according to the CDC. Fifty-four percent of U.S. deaths have been men and 46% have been women based on data from more than 148,0000 deaths. Of the deaths in the 65 to 74 years old age group, 61.2% have been men and 38.8% are women.
In total, more than 208,000 people in the U.S. have died from the coronavirus and 7.2 million have tested positive, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. Barry Dixon, an intensive care physician at St Vincent’s hospital in Melbourne, said the risk of serious complications would increase if Trump got pneumonia, The Guardian reported.
“He’s at a much higher risk of dying if he does develop that bad pneumonia,” Dixon said. “There are other risk factors and co-morbidities such as whether you are a heavy smoker, have diabetes, or have heart disease. The key risk factors for Trump that we know about are his age and the fact he’s overweight, and they’d be high-risk factors.”
Dixon said having mild symptoms doesn’t mean you can’t develop serious symptoms later on.
“We tend to see people with very mild symptoms for the first week, that is typical, and in the second week typically people either develop pneumonia or not,” he told The Guardian. “If you see someone who just got it, they’ve just tested positive, typically they look well. But we would tell those patients to isolate at home and to come to hospital if they feel short of breath. Because in that second week of the virus, people can go from looking very good to pretty rotten even over just 24 to 48 hours.”
This story was originally published October 2, 2020 at 11:52 AM with the headline "Trump’s age, other factors, put him at higher risk of serious illness from COVID-19."