Until 17 days ago, on January 22, men still led the accumulated cases of COVID-19 in Ecuador, what had been happening since the end of February 2020 (case zero was in a woman with a date of onset of symptoms on February 15).
However, from the infographic March 26, 2020, the Ministry of Public Health (MSP) began to disaggregate the sex of each confirmed case.
On that occasion, of every 100 infections, 54 were detected in men and 46 in women. This proportion varied in April of that year until reaching the historical maximum, on May 10, 2020, with 56 men and 44 women detected as infected out of every 100 RT-PCR tests, a proportion that was maintained for 20 days.
At the end of that month, the percentage of confirmed cases dropped to 55% of men and 45% of women and the year 2020 with 52.7% of infections in males and 47.3% in females.
A year passed and 2021 culminated with 51% of cases in men and 49% in women. This predominance of infections, more in men than in women, was maintained for about 700 days in the country.
But that proportion began to vary since last January 23which has been maintained until the MSP report with a cutoff date of February 7: now in 50.46% the infections in women and 49.54% in men. This according to an analysis carried out by this Journal.
Of the last 225,275 confirmed cases throughout the country, 121,078 were detected in women (53.75%) and 104,197 in men (46.35%), which means that While during the start of the pandemic of every 100 positive samples, between 54 and 56 were from mens and of 44 to 46 of womenin the last months of 2021 and so far 2022, decade 100 cases confirmed, 54 are from women Y 46 are from mens.
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Because this Change of trend?
At the discretion of Andrea Gomezmedical, health and epidemiologist, There are factors that could influence this statistic, such as women go to doctors earliermore tests are done and they will probably have the diagnoses sooner.
In relation to the serious illness, Gómez expressed that he still appears to a greater extent in elderly men.
Other factors to take into account, he said, are the socioeconomic situation and the labor aspect.
“It could be and it is a hypothesis that there is a higher diagnosis in women for these causes rather than for a difference in terms of a biological effect of this disease,” said Gómez.
The specialist added that this trend it has not been observed in other countries.
For Byron Núñez, infectologist, scientifically the virus has no gender predilection and neither does the genus have a differentiated immune response related to the virus.
He argued that no research has shown difference in relation to gender.
Núñez posits a hypothesis of this change in trend. He suggests that perhaps from the start of the pandemic they were infected more men because in today’s society men are the ones who work and were infected in their workplaces, while now, in this last stage of extremely high transmissibility, attributed to the omicron variant, they were infected by household level. But, in his opinion, the difference is not significant.
He indicated that there must be several scenarios for it to be significant: that it be permanent in terms of infected cases, hospitalized and dead. In addition, that there is a difference between men and women of the 15% to 20%.
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provisional data to February 5 (epidemiological week number 5) of the Ministry of Public Health, in which it is evident that there are more infections with SARS-CoV-2 in women than in men so far in 2022, contrary to what happened in the previous 22 months of pandemic.
At the national level year 2022: Confirmed cases 85,997 women (53.90%) and 73,563 men (46.10%), 159,560 in total.
Only Guayas year 2022: Confirmed cases 16,176 women (53.06%) and 14,312 men (46.94%), 30,488 in all.
Only Guayaquil year 2022: Confirmed cases 12,795 women (52.89%) and 11,399 men (47.11%), 24,194 in total.
Only Pichincha year 2022: Confirmed cases 23,946 women (52.59%) and 21,584 men (47.41%), 45,530 in all.
Only Quito year 2022: Confirmed cases 21,722 women (52.39%) and 19,743 men (47.61%), 41,465 in total.
Source: Eluniverso
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