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COVID-19 SCIENCE UPDATE

Fast walkers may have lower risk for severe COVID-19, says researchers


How quickly people generally walk may be linked to their risk of developing severe COVID-19, a new study suggested.

Researchers analyzed data on more than 400,000 participants in the UK Biobank, a British registry that closely tracks people's health over many years.

Overall, 973 participants developed a coronavirus infection severe enough to require hospitalization.

Compared to normal-weight individuals, people with obesity had a 49% higher risk for severe COVID-19. But slow walkers had the highest risk of severe COVID-19 regardless of obesity status.

For example, normal-weight people who usually walked at a slow pace - less than 3 miles per hour (4.8 km per hour) - had more than double the odds of developing severe COVID-19 compared to normal-weight people who typically walked more briskly - more than 4 miles per hour (6.4 km per hour).

People with slow walking speed often have other underlying conditions that contribute to poor health.

Gait speed is often used to test the physical capacity of adults and to predict risk of future disease, disability and death.

"Self-reported walking pace, a simple measure of functional fitness, appears to be a risk factor for severe COVID-19 that is independent of obesity," the authors of the current study wrote in a paper posted on Saturday on medRxiv, ahead of peer review.  -- Reuters

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