Smokers face a more significant threat of coronavirus and place their loved ones at risk, according to a stark warning from health officials worldwide.
Health chiefs said there has 'never been a more crucial time' to end smoking dependency than now because of the ever-worsening outbreak worldwide.
Health officials also claimed family, which includes children, can also be at a better threat of serious COVID-19 complications, because of inhaling secondhand smoke.
The new stance from health officials comes as global coronavirus cases reached one million, with more than 50,000 deaths.
Non-smokers not prone on getting coronavirus
They primarily based their recommendation on a 'small but impactful' research in China, which suggests smokers are much more likely to look at their disease progress.
One crew of specialists from Wuhan - where the pandemic began - have been mystified after finding smokers were less probably to capture the lethal virus in the first place.
US News said researchers in China found that patients who tested positive for COVID-19 were 14 times as likely to develop pneumonia as a result of their infection than their non-smoking counterparts.
Recent research by the New England Journal of Medicine explained smokers are more susceptible to severe symptoms if they catch COVID-19. The study claims people who smoke have been 2.4 times more likely to have severe signs and symptoms from COVID-19 compared to folks that did not smoke.
Scientists have called for similar trials to make clear if smoking poses an actual threat, but admit, in general, smokers are greater prone to contamination.
But, it's already mounted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that smoking harms the immune system and may preclude your body's capability to fight off infections. Smoking also will increase inflammation in the body, studies have shown.
"All these [cases] make me believe that we are going to have more severe cases-especially [in] people who are [long-term] smokers or vapers," Melodi Pirzada, chief of pediatric pulmonology at NYU Hospital, told Scientific American.
Public health professionals, according to ABC News, consider that regular cigarette smokers are likely to have extra serious illness if they end up infected with COVID-19. Experts say it makes sense that the habit should worsen the signs and symptoms of COVID-19, although they will want longer-term studies to realize for sure.
The plea to stop now
But because smoking and vaping do well-established harm to the immune system, it seems prudent to assume these might make coronavirus infections worse.
"I think that a sensible thing to do for people is to stop smoking and stop vaping-and avoid secondhand exposure," says Stanton Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research at the University of California, San Francisco.
Specialists underscore that unlike risk factors for which there is no cure -- like diabetes, heart disease, and older age -- cigarette use is behavior that can be changed.
"We should be doing the best we can to manage our health," Columbia University pediatrician Dr. Alok Patel told ABC News.
