From bus drivers to prime ministers, people from all walks of life are falling seriously ill with Covid-19. This has drawn remarks that the disease doesn’t discriminate. The coronavirus is, after all, a more-or-less inanimate piece of floating genetic material. It is not capable of active discrimination.

And yet the virus is having starkly different effects on different groups of people.

One of the most pronounced divides to emerge regards gender. And how Covid-19 is affecting men and women differently isn’t just in the way that the virus is making us sick – it’s also in our long-term health and economic prospects.

Disease differences

One of the most striking differences that has emerged so far is in the death rates of men and women.

In the US, for example, twice as many men have been dying from the virus as women. Similarly, 69% of all coronavirus deaths across Western Europe have been male. Similar patterns have been seen in China and elsewhere.

One team of researchers, led by Anna Purdie at University College London, is charting the gender differences in various countries and working to find out more about why.

For now, the reason is still unclear.

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One theory is that women’s immune response to the virus is stronger, says Philip Goulder, professor of immunology at the University of Oxford. “The immune response throughout life to vaccines and infections is typically more aggressive and more effective in females compared to males,” he says.

This is partly down to the fact that women have two X chromosomes, whereas men have only one – which is important when it comes a coronavirus. “In particular, the protein by which viruses such as coronavirus are sensed is encoded on the X chromosome,” says Goulder. “As a result, this protein is expressed at twice the dose on many immune cells in females compared to males, and the immune response to coronavirus is therefore amplified in females.”

Another possibility is that the difference is down to gender-based lifestyle choices. “There are important behavioural differences between the sexes, for example in smoking, which affect the level of pre-existing disease such as heart disease, chronic lung disease and cancer,” says Goulder. “These have a huge impact on the outcome from infections such as coronavirus.

“The sex differential in smoking is especially marked in some countries such as China, where 50% of men smoke, compared to 5% in women.”