Introduction:

COVID-19 is a disease caused by a new β-coronavirus, which can manifest with a more complex clinical presentation in people with certain comorbidities, on which its evolution may depend; obesity is pointed out among them.

Objective:

to describe factors favouring a worse clinical course of COVID-19 in people with obesity.

Methods:

SciELO, Pubmed, and Google Scholar were used as search engines for scientific information. The search strategy included the following keywords: SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 and obesity. Review and journal research articles, as well as web pages referring specifically to the study topic and published generally in Spanish, Portuguese and English languages in less than five years were evaluated. This allowed us 70 articles to be evaluated, of which 43 were referenced.

Conclusions:

obesity constitutes a disease that worsens the clinical course of COVID-19 by increasing its morbidity and mortality, which is due to several factors related to excess body fat and its consequences.