A nurse preparing to vaccinate. Picture: Sunday Times/Sebabatso Mosamo
While we hope any future waves of Covid will be less severe, there is a simple lesson we can take from the pandemic: exercise has a remarkable and positive protective effect on people’s health. We have always tried to address the four lifestyle habits — physical inactivity, poor nutrition, smoking and alcohol abuse — that lead to the four chronic conditions responsible for 60% of global deaths. But the pandemic has shown that such interventions have a meaningful preventive effect beyond the management of noncommunicable diseases, such as heart disease, and can address risks related to infectious diseases too.
Recently, a study published by the British Journal of Sports Medicine, produced by Vitality in collaboration with Wits University’s sport & health research group and the University of Western Ontario, became the first to make this case based on directly measured physical activity data. The findings prove what we suspected, and go a step further.
It definitively demonstrates that exercise, including brisk walking, has a distinct benefit in preventing hospitalisation, ICU admission, the need for ventilation and the risk of death.