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Men most likely to exhibit the worst COVID-19 symptoms, according to a new study

pharmafile | April 30, 2020 | News story | Business Services COVID-19, coronavirus 

Research into coronavirus cases in Shenzhen, China found that men were 2.5 times as likely to exhibit severe symptoms.

The work was published in The Lancet. It also found that infection rates in young children were no lower than the population average and that women were also roughly equal to men.

This analysis took place from 14 January to 12 February and included 204 women and 187 men. Men were more likely to experience respiratory or organ failure.

In the study, it took five days for patients to show symptoms, but the use of contract tracing and extensive testing reduced the time to identify the virus to three days. Only 9% of patients showed severe symptoms during their first evaluation by a doctor.  On average, each studied patient infected 0.4 other with the virus and 11.2% was passed between housemates.

In conclusion the research says: “Estimates of the distribution of time between symptom onset and case isolation by surveillance type reveal that heightened surveillance combined with case isolation could plausibly account for these low rates of transmission. These results paint a positive picture of the impact of heightened surveillance and isolation in Shenzhen.

The resulting estimates provide important inputs for interpreting surveillance data, evaluating interventions, and setting public health policy.”

Contract tracing technology has been utilized across Asia to help stem the outbreak. China and South Korea have been relatively successful but Western countries are lagging behind. The British government is said to go ahead with its own contact tracing app, and the government have insisted that people’s data would be kept securely for use by the NHS only and will not be collected for longer than necessary. There are also plans to publish the source code for the app so experts can scrutinise it.

Conor Kavanagh

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