According to a research review published August 22 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, regular physical activity can help protect you against severe COVID-19 and may even prevent you from becoming infected.
“It's time to treat exercise as medicine,” says co-author Yasmin Ezzatvar, a doctor of physical therapy and a nursing instructor at Spain’s University of Valencia. “This is more evidence to really affirm that.”
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The researchers analyzed 16 previously published studies that looked for associations between physical activity and COVID-19 outcomes. These studies included more than 1.8 million adults in all, and most relied on participants self-reporting their exercise habits. Most of the studies were conducted in 2020 and early 2021, before COVID-19 vaccines became widely available.
Compared to people who didn’t exercise much, active people were about 36% less likely to be hospitalized and 43% less likely to die if they caught the virus. People who got at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous movement each week—the amount recommended by U.S. public-health officials—had the best protection, the researchers found.
In some ways, that finding is obvious. Exercise is consistently linked to good health and longevity, and it can help prevent or manage chronic conditions that put people at risk of COVID-19 complications, such as diabetes and heart disease.
