Who Is More At Risk From Coronavirus? New Study Suggests Disease More Fatal In Men

In the largest study yet of the outbreak, Chinese researchers have made a potentially startling discovery about coronavirus’s effects based on sex. The study released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday indicates the disease, formally known as Covid-19, poses a higher risk of death for men than for women.

The study found that male patients had a 2.8% fatality rat, while the rate for female patients was 1.7%. Roughly 4.7% of patients were found to have reached a critical state. One scientist theorized the difference might not be tied to biology.

“It might be down to the sort of men and women included in the analysis; it might be the patients’ exposure to situations that would put them at risk — it might not be an underlying biological reason,” Simon Clarke, a professor of cellular microbiology, told CNBC. “You have to be able to exclude all sorts of other social factors in order to be able to say there’s a real biological difference — it could be down to circumstance.”

Men made up 51% of the confirmed cases examined for the study, or 22,981 cases. Women, meanwhile, accounted for 21,691.

Researchers analyzed the records for 72,314 patients for the study. These included 44,672 confirmed cases, 16,186 patients suspected of carrying the virus, and 889 cases where a carrying patient showed no symptoms. Among these cases, the patients were divided based on whether their symptoms were mild, medium or severe.

The patients analyzed were between the ages of 30 and 69. Encouragingly, 81% were found to only have mild cases of the virus.

Covid-19, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has reached more than 73,000 confirmed cases, the vast majority of which are from mainland China. The current death toll is 1,873, only five of which occurred outside China.