Quote:
Lead researcher Prof Tom Yates said self-reported walking pace could be used to predict whether someone was at higher risk from the virus.
The study, run by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Leicester Biomedical Research Centre, was designed to explore links between body mass index (BMI) and self-reported walking pace with the risk of contracting severe Covid-19 and mortality.
It used self-reported data from 412,596 people who participate in UK Biobank, a biomedical database and research study.
Slow walking was considered to be at a speed of less than three miles (4.8km) per hour, steady/average speed was three to four miles (6.4km) per hour, and brisk at more than four miles per hour.
Researchers also found slow walkers were 2.5 times more likely to develop severe Covid-19 than those in the fastest bracket.
Risk was uniformly high in normal weight slow walkers and slow walkers with obesity.
However, researchers noted that self-reported walking pace was subject to possible reporting bias and therefore no definitive causal conclusions could be derived from the results.
These people will publish absolutely