Early data suggest that fewer people than expected with pre-existing chronic respiratory disease are getting severe COVID-19, British and Spanish respiratory physicians say.

In an opinion piece in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine, Professor David Halpin from the University of Exeter, UK, and co-authors from the National Spanish Network for Respiratory Research discuss the anomaly.

“One might anticipate that patients with chronic respiratory diseases, particularly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma would be at increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and more severe presentations of COVID-19,” they write.

“However, it is striking that both diseases appear to be under-represented in the comorbidities reported for patients with COVID-19, compared with the global burden of disease estimates of the prevalence of these conditions in the general population.”