Quitting smoking could help you avoid COVID

Doctors have warned for decades that smoking can be hazardous to your health. 

Now, they have another argument on their side–smoking, or vaping, could make you a greater target for COVID-19. 

Dr. Taylor Hays works in the Nicotine Dependence Center at Mayo Clinic in Rochester.  Hays says anyone who’s serious about quitting smoking has to find ways to change the routines associated with tobacco use, such as avoiding smoking if it’s part of your wake-up routine.    

Hays says studies show that smoking disrupts the hairs inside the lungs that can move mucus out of your system, which could allow the COVID virus to settle in the lungs and spread.   

A pulmonology nurse at Mayo in La Crosse, Jenny Prinsen, says a study in California showed that vaping and smoking sharply increase the risk of becoming ill from COVID.    

Prinsen says many people smoke in response to stress, and she argues that going for a cigarette should not be your first reaction in a stressful situation. 

Early in the pandemic, there was speculation that smoking could protect people from COVID, but Hays   doesn’t buy that.

“I told a friend of mine, if it turns out at the end of the day that cigarette smoking…is a protective device against COVID-19 infection or severe disease, I’ll eat my hat,” said Hays.