Virtual seminar 'The association between smoking status and infection, hospitalisation and mortality

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SARS-CoV-2 is the causative agent of COVID-19, a zoonotic disease which has reached pandemic levels and is designated a public health emergency of international concern. It is plausible that former or current smoking status is associated with infection, hospitalisation and/or mortality from COVID-19. Dr Perski and her team aimed to produce a rapid synthesis of available evidence pertaining to the rates of infection, hospitalisation, disease severity and mortality from SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 stratified by smoking status. Given the increasing availability of data on this topic, this is a living review with regular updates (https://www.qeios.com/read/latest-UJR2AW). In a living review where new data are regularly added to the analyses, it may be more appropriate to use a Bayesian (as opposed to frequentist) approach, where prior knowledge is used in combination with new data to estimate a posterior risk distribution. In this talk, Dr Perski will present findings from the most recent update of her living review and discuss methodological considerations, including issues complicating interpretation of the results.

About the speaker:

Dr Olga Perski is an interdisciplinary scientist working at the intersection of technology and health behaviour change, with a focus on smoking cessation and alcohol reduction. She completed her PhD at UCL in 2018, with a thesis on the definition, measurement and promotion of user engagement with digital interventions. She is a Research Associate in the UCL Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group, where her work is focused on the development and evaluation of digital interventions for smoking cessation and alcohol reduction, and the analysis of survey data to gain insight into population-wide influences on smoking and alcohol consumption. In the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, she co-leads several studies to examine the association of smoking status with SARS-CoV-2 infection, hospitalisation, disease severity and mortality and contributes to a survey study to gain a better understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on smoking, vaping and alcohol consumption among UK adults.  

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