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When the new coronavirus arrived in early 2020, people with asthma were identified as being at higher risk from the disease. Judgements about who was at increased risk had to be made on the best available evidence – which wasn’t much. Data from China was only just emerging and COVID-19 had yet to reach pandemic status.

Given that asthma is a lung disease and COVID-19 targets the lungs, it made sense that people with asthma would be considered at higher risk, as they are from other respiratory illnesses. But as more data emerged, the picture became less clear.

Read the full article on The Conversation website, written by Jamie Hartmann-Boyce (Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences)

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