People with blood type A (II) most susceptible to coronavirus infection - research

People with blood type A (II) are the most susceptible to the COVID-19 coronavirus infection, while people with blood type O (I) are the least susceptible, says research by a group of Chinese scientists, published at medRxiv website.

The scientists have reviewed data on 2,200 patients from three Wuhan and Shenzhen hospitals, including more than 200 lethal cases.

According to the researchers, normal blood type distribution among Wuhan citizens is as follows: 34% have blood type O (I), 32% have blood type A (II), 25% have blood type B (III) and 9% have blood type AB (IV). To get this data, the scientists have analyzed a control group of 3,700 non-infected Wuhan citizens.

At the same time, most Wuhan coronavirus patients (38%) have blood type A (II), while 26,4% have blood type B (III) and 25.8% have blood type O (I). The least amount of patients (10%) had blood type AB (IV).

Therefore, the share of people with blood type A (II) is much higher among coronavirus patients than normal, while share people with blood type O (I) is much smaller.

To check their data, the scientists reviewed statistics on 398 additional patients from Wuhan and Shenzhen and the new data has proven their theory: people with blood type A (II) are the most susceptible to the coronavirus infection.

An outbreak of the new coronavirus-related disease, which occurred in central China at the end of 2019, has spread to about 130 countries. The World Health Organization on March 11 declared it as a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, more than 170,000 have contracted the virus around the world. Almost 7,000 have died. Russia’s special task force has identified 93 coronavirus cases.