Smoking-related complications among COVID-19 cases: a population-based survey in Qatar

Objective: To establish the impact of smoking on the severity of COVID-19 infection among adults 18 years and above in Qatar during 2020–2021. Design: Analytical cross-sectional study from May 2020 to 2021. Setting: Health Information System (HIS) of Communicable disease and control center of Hamad Medical Corporation in Qatar. Participant: We randomly selected participants from all COVID-19 confirmed cases (n = 1036). Participants below 18 years old, people with HIV, and those who could not communicate in English and Arabic were excluded. The remaining patients (n = 576) were then allocated into smoking and nonsmoking groups. Result: The prevalence of tobacco smoking was (20.48%) among patients with COVID-19 infection. Age, nationality, employment, and low-to-moderate income were statistically significantly associated with smoking. In addition, the proportion of smokers who required hospitalization was higher compared to nonsmokers (23.7% vs. 17.9%) and were younger (mean age 44.18 years ±18.431) than nonsmokers (mean age 51.6 years ±18.382). The logistic regression revealed that smokers had significantly higher odds of Vitamin D deficiency than nonsmokers [OR: 2.358; CI: 1.017–5.513]. Conclusion: Even with limited statistical significance between smoking history and COVID-19 disease severity and outcome, clinical risk differences were observed among smokers. However, further studies may be required to evaluate the association.