It looks like that, as time goes on, doctors and researchers continue to learn more about COVID-19.

According to a story reported on by Western Mass News, a new study conducted by researchers at Stanford University in California has found that young adults and teens who vape have a higher risk of COVID-19 compared to their peers who don’t vape.

Dr. Erika Hamilton, a microbiologist at UMass Amherst, said, “I think if you asked most healthcare professionals if vaping would make COVID-19 worse, I suspect pretty close to 100 percent would say yes, so this is not a surprise.”

Dr. Hamilton went on to say that although these findings are not a surprise, doctors now have some answers.

What is happening is if you took a person, two people who led the exact same lives and one vaped and didn’t, what you would find is the young adult who vaped would be five times more likely not only get sick, but become significantly ill with shortness of breath, fever, body aches, lethargy.                                                                  Dr. Erika Hamilton

The study focused on 4,300 teens and young adults in their late teens and early 20’s and asked them about their use of cigarettes or vaping products.

Dr. Hamilton added, “Teens and young adults who vaped were five times more likely to become ill with COVID-19 and ones who use both combustible cigarettes and vaped were almost seven times more likely than their peers who didn’t use these products at all to become ill with COVID-19.”

Hamilton said the vaping products are still new and more research needs to be done but she advises young teens to stay healthy.

For more on the study findings, including employment and minority status, check out the full story on Western Mass News' website. Our thanks to them for the update.

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