COVID-19: A gender-biased pandemic

Abstract

The world today is in the midst of its second wave of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), which started as an outbreak first reported in December 2019, Wuhan City, the capital of Hubei Province in China. Then soon enough, it was declared as a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020 by WHO and a pandemic on March 11, 2020. While initially greater emphasis was laid on the elderly and people with co-morbidities such as diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and immune-compromised states as being at high risk of contracting the Covid-19 disease and/or dying of it, but by now, it is clear that being male is also a factor. Data and studies from different countries across the globe involving China, the United States of America, and European nations such as Italy have showed that although there is no difference based on sex in the number of cases testing positive for the virus, more men died from the virus, and the case-fatality ratio is greater among men than women. Women are infected by the virus as frequently as men but men are more likely to contract severe forms of disease and succumb to it. The reason behind this sex-biased mortality seen in Covid-19 cannot be explained by a single genetic or social factor. The present short communication aims at enumerating the possible reasons behind this gender-biased pandemic.

Keywords: Covid-19; Covid-19 disease; gender bias; pandemic.