Till now, almost all studies have suggested that that men are more prone to dying from COVID-19 than women globally.
But the latest analysis of case fatalities in India suggests otherwise. It shows that females may have a higher relative-risk of COVID-19 mortality in India.
used crowdsourced data to provide early estimates for age-sex specific COVID-19 case fatality rate (CFR) for India.
The study, published in the Journal of Global Health Science, presented an age and sex specific view of mortality from the disease using the measure of CFR, which is the ratio of confirmed deaths in total confirmed cases.
In the research, scientists, including Abhishek Kumar from the Institute of Economic Growth in New Delhi, evaluated adjusted-CFR to capture the potential mortality among the currently active infections.
According to the study, the CFR among males is 2.9 per cent, while that for females it is 3.3 per cent in India.
As of May 20, 2020, males shared a higher burden (66 per cent) of COVID-19 infections than females (34 per cent) but the infection is more or less evenly distributed in under-five as well as elderly age groups.
Males are at a greater disadvantage than females, they said, adding that it is unclear whether males experience a higher risk of mortality throughout the age-spectrum, or if there are sex-related differences in survival risk.
“While males have a higher overall burden (66 per cent) of COVID-19 infections than females, the infection is evenly distributed in the under-five age group and, to some extent, even among the elderly age groups (particularly 70+ years),” the scientists wrote in the study.