‘Vaping may raise Covid risk by five times’

Since the start of the pandemic, experts have warned that the coronavirus probably capitalises on the scarred lungs of smokers and vapers. Researchers are now starting to pinpoint the ways in which smoking and vaping seem to enhance the virus’s ability to spread.
A team of researchers recently reported that young adults who vape are five times as likely to receive a coronavirus diagnosis. Smoking and vaping appears to alter the surfaces of certain cells, prompting them to coat themselves with more of a molecule called ACE-2 — the protein the coronavirus uses to break into its targets.
That pattern, layered on top of the ways in which vaping weakens the lungs, may help explain why a recent survey of over 4,000 people ages 13 to 24 found that vaping was strongly linked to catching the Covid.
“And if you’re smoking or vaping you’re not wearing a mask,” Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, a pediatrics researcher at Stanford University and an author on the study, said.