Coronavirus was found more fatal in men than women, according to the largest study ever conducted on the pandemic to date.
The research paper titled "Vital Surveillances: The Epidemiological Characteristics of an Outbreak of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Diseases (COVID-19) was based on 72,314 patient records from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The researchers looked into 44,672 confirmed cases of the coronavirus. There were 16,186 suspected cases and 889 cases where the person manifested no symptoms. The patients were divided into three groups based on their symptoms: mild, severe or critical.
Analysis shows that coronavirus is more fatal in men than women. Officials found a 2.8% fatality rate for men compared to 1.7% for women.
The number of cases with male patients accounted for 22,981, or 51%, of the total confirmed cases. On the other hand, there were 21,691 female patients as of February 11.
“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,” said Simon Clarke, associate professor in 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," Clarke added.
Meanwhile, elderly people and individuals with preexisting health conditions were found most at risk of reaching a fatal case of COVID-19. Case fatality rate is higher with age. Data shows that 14.8% of cases in patients over age 80 led to death. Patients ages 70 to 79 recorded an 8% fatality rate. Individuals in 60 to 69 had a fatality rate of 3.6%.
“Because in most people it’s relatively mild, we don’t know how many people have COVID-19. The possibility remains that a lot of people have it and don’t know they have it,” Clarke said. “But we don’t know that, and unless we screen populations on a large scale there’s no way of knowing."
