Studies from different health orgnaizations around the world show that men are more likely to die due to COVID-19 compared to women, and Puerto Princesa City’s statistic is no different.
In the recent local government’s live update, Incident Management Team Commander Dr. Dean Palanca stated that their mortality statistics show that men are more likely to die compared to women when they contract COVID-19. As of November 9, out of 326 deaths, 184 were males while 142 are females.
The reason behind this is that men are more likely to have comorbidities compared to women. In the IMT’s mortality data, 99 men have comorbidities while women are 11 numbers less.
During Healthline’s interview with infectious disease expert and co-founder of the Global Infectious Disease and Epidemiology Network (GIDEON) Dr. Stephen Berger, he said that cardiovascular diseases are more prevalent in men than in women as well as high blood pressure and liver diseases that adds to the negative outcomes when infected by COVID-19.
Dr. Palanca, on the other hand, stated that women are more cautious when it comes to their health although, in his previous update, they are more likely to catch the virus as they are usually running errands for thier households and exposing themselves in crowded areas such as markets.
Not only diseases but vices like smoking and drinking, which is more common in men than in women, are in play but as well biology and work environment that makes men more susceptible to dying due to complications caused by covid.
According to the Gavin Oudit and Marc Pfeffer’s study published in 2020, men have higher counts of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) which “enables coronavirus to infect healthy cells, this may help explain why men are more vulnerable to COVID-19 than women.”
Dr. Berger added that women are also found to have “stronger immune system and response to infections” because of their extra X chromosome.”
He further explains that men are more prone to work in harsher environments which hightens their exposure that could impact their immune system’s response to COVID-19.
Studies show these findings are not new in pandemics as it has been recorded in history that viruses are deadlier to men than in women like the worldwide flu in 1918 and SARS outbreak in 2003.