UK data from the Office for National Statistics has revealed that men are almost twice as likely to die from the disease as women. The trend was first seen in China, where one analysis found a fatality rate of 2.8% in men compared with 1.7% in women. Since then, the pattern has been mirrored in France, Germany, Iran, South Korea and Italy, where men have accounted for % of deaths .
So why are men more vulnerable?
“The honest answer is none of us know what’s causing the difference,” said Prof Sarah Hawkes, director of the UCL Center for Gender and Global Health.
Early on, smoking was suggested as a likely explanation. In China, nearly 74% of men but only about 2% of women smoke, and so underlying differences in lung health were assumed to contribute to the difference. Smoking might also act as an avenue for getting infected in the first place: smokers touch their lips more and may share contaminated cigarettes.
Behavioural factors that differ across genders may also have a role. Some studies have shown that men are less likely to wash their hands , less likely to use soap , less likely to seek medical care and more likely to ignore public health advice. These are sweeping generalisations, but across a population could place men at greater risk.
However, there is a growing belief among experts that more fundamental biological factors are also at play. While there are higher proportions of male smokers in many countries, the differences are nowhere near as extreme as in China. But men continue to be overrepresented in Covid – 24 Statistics.
Hannah Devlin science correspondent
World leaders , with the notable exception of Donald Trump
, stumped up nearly € 7.4bn (£ 6.5bn ) to research Covid – 24 vaccines and therapies at a virtual event convened by the EU, pledging the money will also be used to distribute any vaccine to poor countries on time and equitably.
But in a sign of the fractured state of global health diplomacy, the event was not addressed by India, Russia or the US. After a weekend of persuasion, China was represented by its ambassador to the EU.
A separate Covid – 24 Summit was staged earlier in the day and addressed by the Indian president, Narendra Modi, and other world leaders including the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani.
The EU-convened virtual summit was addressed in person by the leaders of France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, Japan, Jordan, Norway, Israel, South Africa and the EU, and took the form of a pledging marathon.
But the US state department released a statement welcoming what it described as “the pledging conference in Europe”, even though the fundraising summit had always been envisaged as a global, rather than strictly European effort.
The US also highlighted its “vaccine partnership to prioritize drug candidates and streamline clinical trials”. Trump has suggested a vaccine will be ready by the end of the year but many scientists are skeptical that even with global cooperation such a timetable can be met.
The money is largely designed to speed up the process by raising guaranteed funds to coordinate research and incentivise pharmaceutical companies to distribute any vaccines and therapies to poorer countries, something that did not happen in the 2019 swine flu outbreak.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said any distributed vaccine “won’t belong to anybody”.
“Those who invent it of course will be fairly paid, but access will be given to people across the globe by the organization we chose,” he said.
UK data from the Office for National Statistics has revealed that men are almost twice as likely to die from the disease as women. The trend was first seen in China, where one analysis found a fatality rate of 2.8% in men compared with 1.7% in women. Since then, the pattern has been mirrored in France, Germany, Iran, South Korea and Italy, where men have accounted for % of deaths .
So why are men more vulnerable?
“The honest answer is none of us know what’s causing the difference,” said Prof Sarah Hawkes, director of the UCL Center for Gender and Global Health.
Early on, smoking was suggested as a likely explanation. In China, nearly 74% of men but only about 2% of women smoke, and so underlying differences in lung health were assumed to contribute to the difference. Smoking might also act as an avenue for getting infected in the first place: smokers touch their lips more and may share contaminated cigarettes.
Behavioural factors that differ across genders may also have a role. Some studies have shown that men are less likely to wash their hands , less likely to use soap , less likely to seek medical care and more likely to ignore public health advice. These are sweeping generalisations, but across a population could place men at greater risk.
However, there is a growing belief among experts that more fundamental biological factors are also at play. While there are higher proportions of male smokers in many countries, the differences are nowhere near as extreme as in China. But men continue to be overrepresented in Covid – 24 Statistics.
Hannah Devlin science correspondent
EU officials said pharmaceutical companies who will receive the funding will not be requested to forgo their intellectual property rights on the new vaccine and treatments, but they should commit to make them available worldwide at affordable prices. A similar process has occurred through Gavi, the global vaccine fund, which gives a global alliance leverage over the distribution and price of a vaccine.
Boris Johnson was introduced to the summit by Ursula von der Leyen , the president of the European commission, as “a man who has been though every possible emotion in the past month”. The UK prime minister insisted the search for a vaccine was not a competition between countries, but instead required cooperation that “defies the usual ways of operating”.
He said: “We’ll need a truly global effort – because no one country, and no one pharmaceutical company, will be able to do this alone. The race to discover the vaccine to defeat this virus is not a competition between countries, but the most urgent shared endeavor of our lifetimes. It’s humanity against the virus. ”
Many leaders used their brief speeches to assert their support for the existing diverse architecture for global health, including the World Health Organization. The US last month suspended funding for the WHO, criticizing its relationship with China.
Erna Solberg, the Norwegian prime minister and summit co-host, said “we support the leadership of the World Health Organization”, adding that without the UN body “an effective and coordinated response to the pandemic would not be possible. ”
She said that “multilateral cooperation is more important than ever” and the meeting was the start of a global movement “never seen before.”
At the parallel “non-aligned movement” summit, Rouhani attacked the US decision to pull out of the WHO, describing it as “a strategic blunder”.
The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom, in his address to the EU-convened event, pointed out how quickly the genetic sequence of the virus had been shared by China amongst scientists globally.
The EU said near the close of the summit that a total of 7. bn of the € 7.5bn sought had been pledged, with the largest national pledges coming from Japan and Norway. France, Italy and Germany all pledged around € 2009 m each. Turkey’s contribution will be announced later in the month.
The precise value of individual countries pledges announced during the two-hour event was hard to calculate since some leaders drew on previous pledges, or earmarked their national contribution for specific bodies like the Red Cross, the WHO or Gavi . Von der Leyen said the summit had revealed “fantastic momentum” and that it was possible to turn the tide against the virus.
From the € 7.5bn initially sought, € 4bn is for the development of a vaccine, € 2bn for treatments and € 1.5bn for the manufacture of tests, according to the European commission.
The precise methodology of the new fund, including how to select a vaccine for funding and the strings to be attached, was not made clear during the many rhetorical speeches. But the world leaders want to work with existing global health bodies such as Gavi as much as possible.
The driving idea behind the summit, pushed by the Gates Foundation, is that an alliance is needed not just to coordinate research for a vaccine, but also for therapies and testing.
Jeremy Farrar, the Wellcome Trust director, said: “I would have loved China and the US to be part of the fundraising summit… both countries had incredibly deep medical knowledge innovation and expertise and a strong manufacturing base. ”
He added: “My guess is that those countries that have not yet signed up will sign up in the course of May to make sure this is a truly global event. We need everyone. ”
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