NEW YORK, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- Obese individuals are at high risk of suffering severe cases of COVID-19, a study finds.

Only one in every ten people who end up in intensive care with COVID-19 were in a range of healthy weight, according to the study carried out by Dr. Francois Pattou, head of the Department of General and Endocrine Surgery at Lille University Hospital in France, along with his colleagues. About half of the 124 intensive-care patients with COVID-19 in a sample they studied were obese and most of the remaining ones were overweight.

In comparison, only "a quarter had obesity or severe obesity; a further quarter were overweight, and around half fell into the healthy weight range," in a control group of 306 patients admitted to intensive care for other reasons without COVID-19.

"Several months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the increased risk posed by this virus to people living with obesity could not be clearer," Pattou said. "Our data show that the chances of increasing to more severe disease increases with BMI, the point where almost all intensive-care COVID-19 patients with severe obesity will end up on a ventilator."

The findings will be presented at the European and International Congress on Obesity.