Researchers analysing data on COVID-19 patients in China noticed how few of them wore glasses.

Their observation was all the more apparent in a country in which at least one in three of the population has myopia. When the group investigated further, they found that only 16 (5.8%) of the 276 in-patients who tested positive for COVID-19 at one hospital in Hubei province, over several weeks in early 2020, wore glasses for more than eight hours per day. These 16 were also the only study participants with myopia.