New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, is reportedly considering a six-week ban on combustible cigarettes to reduce the state's coronavirus death rate.
Dr. Howard Zucker, the Commissioner of Health, who has long advocated for additional restrictions on combustible cigarette sales, has urged Cuomo to issue the temporary ban, arguing that a ban on cigarette sales for the duration of the outbreak will save thousands of lives and will reduce the State’s shortage of ventilators, perhaps by several thousand during its peak.
The New York State Academy of Family Physicians has also pressed Cuomo to issue an executive order banning the sale of all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, citing a study that found smokers are at an increased risk of being impacted by the respiratory illness.
According to Dr. Jason Matuszak, the Academy’s president-elect, a recent study shows patients who use tobacco are 14 times as likely to have COVID-19 progression requiring more extensive treatment and hospitalization than those who do not.
A paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at more than 1,000 COVID-19 patients in China and found that people who smoke are 2.4 times more likely to become critically ill and require ventilation than those who do not.
According to Italy’s National Health Institute, smokers with COVID-19 were one-third more likely to have a serious clinical situation than non-smokers. Half of these smokers required a ventilator.
There is also some research showing that e-cigarette aerosols are safer for the respiratory tract than cigarette smoke, but both mechanisms reduce the lungs’ capacity to fight off infection.
Some doctors think vaping could be the reason that about a fifth of COVID-19 patients who have been hospitalized in the US are between the ages of 20 and 44.