Diabetics make up 40% of COVID deaths in US, experts say

People with diabetes account for a staggering 40 percent of those who have died from COVID-19 in the US, according to the American Diabetes Association.

“The pandemic disproportionately impacted people living with diabetes,” the ADA’s chief scientific and medical officer, Dr. Robert Gabbay, told HealthDay Now last week.

He called the statistic “really quite sobering,” given that so many of the US pandemic deaths came from a group making up just 10 percent of the population.

As of Friday, the US had seen 608,495 deaths from COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University — which would make nearly 245,000 of them diabetics.

“I can’t say this strongly enough — if you have diabetes, get vaccinated,” Gabbay said.

“With the risk of hospitalization and death related to COVID being six to 12 times higher for people with diabetes, it’s time to get vaccinated,” he insisted.

Alarmingly, the ADA has also said that cases of type 2 diabetes have almost doubled in children since the pandemic.

Leave a Comment