Effect of home physical exercise on obesity in social isolation period of Corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic, Ethiopia

Introduction: The purpose of present study was to examine effect of home physical exercise on obesity in social isolation period of corona virus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Material & Methods: In this study, participants were a random sample of 150 actively online friends from the entire social medias friends of totaling 200 friends of the researcher. Data were collected in Ethiopia, between April 1 and July 1, 2020. A descriptive statistics was employed. Moreover, a paired sample t-test was used at level of significance set at 0.05 alpha to compare participant obesity before and during COVID-19 pandemic. Results: The results indicated that, before pandemic 78.8 % of participants and during pandemic period 87.9% of participants had normal body weight. But there was variation of BMI. For instance before pandemic there were underweight subjects but during pandemic there was no a single individual in underweight category. The reason was majority participants gained 1-5 kg and some individuals gained 6-10kg of body weight during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the result of paired sample t-test analysis, BMI significantly increased after COVID-19 (P=0.003). Conclusion: Based on the results, 72.8 % participants gained weight during pandemic because people minimized their time to exercise and eating too much without burring calories. Therefore, during COVID-19 pandemic period, people should perform physical exercises regularly at home to avoid excessive body weight.