2.2 High-risk groups of COVID-19
As documented, COVID-19 can infect different groups of people, where most of them will recover without hospitalization, but others will develop sever illness. People with high risk for contracting COVID-19 infection include older people, usually over 60 to 70 years old and those who have weakened immune response either due to administering chemotherapy, radiation or medication for an autoimmune disease, undergoing an organ or stem cell transplant, losing a spleen or having non-functioning one. Moreover, adults (over 18 years old) with underlying chronic medical conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, chronic heart, lung and kidney diseases are more vulnerable to succumbed to COVID-19 infection (Vishnevetsky and Levy, 2020). Similarly, pregnant women appear to be more susceptible to COVID-19 with the potential of developing maternal and fetal complications (Liu et al., 2020a). As well, there is also an increased risk for overweight people and heavy cigarettes smokers (Tamara and Tahapary, 2020; van Zyl-Smit et al., 2020).
On the other hand, all children, even those with underlying medical problems, did not show a high risk of severe illness from COVID-19 (Lyu et al., 2020).