Covid among women rising slowly but steadily

Men Covid-19 patients might far outnumber their female counterparts in the state till date. But there is a slow but steady increase in the number of women stung by the novel coronavirus in Tamil Nadu.
According to data from the directorate of public health and preventive medicine, there is an increase of roughly 6% in the number of women Covid patients over the past four weeks.
From 31.3 % on April 25, the percentage of women testing positive increased to 32.6 on May 10. There was a gradual rise every day and on Wednesday, share of women Covid patients has touched 37.7%.
Former Indian Council of Medical Research scientist T Mariappan noted that scientifically there is no correlation between gender and Covid infection, but there could be other factors which have led to increase in exposure among women of late. One plausible explanation was that women stepped out of houses lesser and hence low infection rate in the beginning, but the virus has now started spreading among them at household level through their family members who ventured out.
This was seen in the case of Coimbatore Covid positive patients on Wednesday when the health officials found 11 contacts of the 28-year-old man who died on Sunday to be Covid positive. Out of the 11, nine are women – his own family members as well as neighbours.
“This could differ from region to region also. In districts like Kancheepuram and Chengalpet, there are lot of women involved in fish vending. So, they would be exposed directly to virus rather than through family members,’’ Mariappan said.
Former director of public health P Kulandaisamy pointed out that when Covid spread started in TN, most of foreign returnees, New Delhi travellers and Koyambedu workers who turned out to be Covid 19 patients were men. But when the largescale infection starts, the character of the infected population will change, he said. “The proportion of women Covid patients could increase further and eventually women will be equally affected unless the trend is arrested,’’ he said.
This increase, however, pertains only to females in the age group of 13 to 60 years. Among the other two age wise grouping done by the health department, there is no such increase seen. While in the first category of zero to 12 years, the number of female is more or less equal. In the third category of people aged 60 and above, women are lesser than men, but there is no increase in infection rate among female seen.