Mexican Juan Pedro Franco was the world's fattest man in 2017. He then rose to fame after losing a huge amount of weight. The person recently made headlines again after being infected with Sars-CoV-2 and overcoming the disease.
Mexico is the 8th most affected country in the world by the current Covid-19 pandemic with approximately 730,000 cases for more than 76,000 deaths . As the Mexico News Daily explains in an article of September 25, 2020, a certain Juan Pedro Franco contracted the virus and managed to beat the disease a month later. Juan Pedro Franco is a minor celebrity, having been the fattest man in the world in 2017, a "title" awarded by the famous Guinness Book. In 2016 at the time of his candidacy, the man weighed 595 kg , as much as an adult male polar bear! In 2018, after setting his record, Juan Pedro Franco enjoyed a resurgence in popularity thanks to his dramatic weight loss. Its mass literally melted up to 208 kg , a loss of almost 400 kg.
Juan Pedro Franco explained to AFP that the disease was for him a very difficult episode . Indeed, the man was among those at risk. Particularly aggressive, the disease caused him headaches, body aches, fever and shortness of breath. However, the ailments related to his past obesity such as diabetes, hypertension and pulmonary fragility did not play in his favor.
Dr. José Antonio Castañeda officiating in the city of Guadalajara had guided Juan Pedro Franco in his weight loss. He recalled that people with diabetes who are prone to hypertension or cardiovascular disease are more likely to suffer from serious complications in the face of Covid-19. According to the doctor, the patient underwent no less than three operations helping him to cope with the disease. On the other hand, the mother of Juan Pedro Franco was not so lucky and died of the coronavirus at the age of 66.
At the end of August 2020, we mentioned a meta-analysis of 75 studies involving approximately 400,000 patients obese affected by the coronavirus. Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA) have estimated that obese people with the disease are twice as likely to end up in hospital and have a 74% higher risk of land in an intensive care unit (ICU), compared to people who are not overweight. Thus, moderate to severe obesity would jump by almost 50% the risk of dying from the disease.
