"Do Type A Black People Suffer More Severely from COVID-19 Than Type O White People?"

On the 10th, as a staff member at Gangnam Daesung Academy tested positive for COVID-19, health authorities continued testing contacts including students. Citizens who visited the screening clinic set up at Songpa-gu Public Health Center in Seoul are waiting to be tested. Photo by Kang Jin-hyung aymsdream@

[Asia Economy Reporter Cho Hyun-ui] Research results have shown that the risk of infection from the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) varies according to blood type and race.

Professor Andre Frank's team at Kiel University in Germany claimed in a paper titled "Genome-wide Association Study of Severe COVID-19 Respiratory Failure," published on the 17th (local time) in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), that blood type A has a higher likelihood of progressing to severe cases compared to other blood types. On the other hand, blood type O showed the lowest likelihood.

The research team compared and analyzed 1,980 severe COVID-19 patients and over 2,000 mild or asymptomatic patients from seven hospitals in Italy and Spain. The analysis of severe patients showed that blood type A had a 50% higher chance of leading to respiratory failure compared to other blood types.

In China, the origin of COVID-19, a blood type-related study was also published in March. Chinese researchers investigated 1,775 confirmed cases at Jin Yintan Hospital in Wuhan and found that blood type O had a relatively lower risk of infection, while blood type A had a higher risk.

In the United States, infection risk was found to vary by race. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analyzed 600,000 confirmed cases with known race and ethnicity information, showing 36% White, 33% Hispanic, and 22% Black.

Whites make up over 60% of the total U.S. population, but their proportion among confirmed cases is about half of that. In contrast, Hispanics constitute only 18% of the total population but account for one in three confirmed cases. Blacks also make up only 13% of the total population.

North American Indigenous peoples and Alaska Natives were hospitalized for COVID-19 at a rate five times higher than Whites. Blacks and Hispanics were hospitalized at rates 4.5 times and 4 times higher than Whites, respectively, indicating that minority groups had higher hospitalization rates.

The CDC stated, "The proportion of people with diabetes, obesity, and heart disease was relatively high in areas predominantly inhabited by Black people," adding, "The COVID-19 pandemic is having a severe impact on specific population groups."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.