Pestilence and famine: Continuing down the vicious cycle with COVID-19

Abstract

Despite the fact that we produce enough food to feed everyone on Earth, world hunger is on the rise. On the other side of the table, the obesity crisis also weighs heavily. Malnutrition is less about food than about socioeconomic factors such as conflict, poverty, and global disasters such as climate change and the novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Nutrition and infectious disease exist in an intricate dance. Adequate and balanced nutrition is critical for appropriate response to infection and any changes in the balance can serve as a tipping point for the next pandemic. On the other hand, pandemics, such as COVID-19, lead to greater malnutrition. Both over- and undernutrition increase severity of disease, alter vaccine effectiveness, and potentially create conditions for viral mutation and adaptation-further driving the disease and famine vicious cycle. These long-term health and socioeconomic repercussions have direct effects at individual and global levels and lead to long-term consequences. Therefore, investing in and strengthening public health, pandemic prevention, and nutrition programs become vital at a much more complex systems level.

Fig 1. Some key facts and points on the vicious cycle of nutrition and infectious disease.

Nutrition is critical for immune response and protection from infection. A significant proportion of people in the world are malnourished, a major concern for infectious disease. COVID-19 has increased malnutrition worldwide, creating conditions that may lead to the next pandemic. “People pack” by Dumitriu Robert, “Coronavirus pack” by Graphic Mall, “Coronavirus icon pack” by SkyClick, and “Coronavirus COVID-19 pack” by Eucalyp Studio are all available at http://www.iconfinder.com under a Creative Commons (Attribution 3.0 Unported) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). “Phosphor Thin Vol.4 pack” by Phosphor Icons is available at https://www.iconfinder.com/iconsets/phosphor-thin-vol-4 under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).