Donald Trump's age and weight 'would classify him as vulnerable'

US president Donald Trump arrives at Morristown Municipal Airport to attend a fundraiser at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, last Thursday. Picture: Evan Vucci/AP

US president Donald Trump’s gender, age, and weight are all factors that make him more vulnerable to developing severe Covid-19, and give him a notional risk of around 4% of dying from it, health experts said.

The probability is hard to assess precisely, however, since factors such as overall fitness and activity levels, pre-existing conditions, and recent medical research can all make a significant difference.

A working paper by the US National Bureau of Economic Research published in July put an infected, but otherwise healthy, 70 to 79-year-old’s risk of dying from Covid-19 at 4.6%, regardless of gender.

David Spiegelhalter, a professor of risk and an expert in statistics at Cambridge University in the UK, cited a Covid-19 survival calculator that put the mortality rate for an otherwise healthy 74-year-old white man with Covid-19 during the peak of the pandemic in Britain earlier this year at 3% to 4%.

That risk would now “presumably be somewhat less”, he said, as doctors around the world have gained experience in treating the disease.

Michael Head, a global health professor at the University of Southampton, said that “the president’s profile would classify him as vulnerable. He is aged 74, and reportedly overweight”.

Information provided by a White House physician in June puts the 74-year-old president in the obese category, which triples his risk of needing hospital treatment, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released in August.

Even for otherwise healthy 65 to 74-year-olds infected with coronavirus, the mortality risk is 90 times higher than for those aged 18-29, according to the CDC data.

Julian Tang, an expert in respiratory sciences at Leicester University, said that, apart from age and obesity, “other existing medical conditions like diabetes, hypertension, other chronic heart and lung disease can lead to serious Covid-19 disease”.

But Naveed Sattar, a professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow, noted that Trump has no reported chronic conditions and is reasonably active — he plays golf frequently and appears to walk briskly — which may offset some of the risks.

The CDC data also do not take into account the state-of-the-art care that the president is likely to receive, although medical experts warned Trump’s doctors not to be tempted to treat him differently from any similar patient.

“I would advise them: do not deviate from your standard protocol — because that’s when mistakes happen, and you’re starting to experiment,” said senior clinical lecturer at University of Exeter Medical School, Bharat Pankhania.