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Blocked by Gender: Disparities in COVID19 infection detection in Tamil Nadu, India

Globally, a gender gap in COVID-19 has been noted with men reporting higher share of both morbidity and deaths compared to women. While the gender gap in fatalities has been similar across the globe, there have been interesting disparities in the detection of COVID-19 cases in men and women. While w...

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Autores principales: Samanta, Tannistha, Gopalan, Kaushik, Devi, Tanmay
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9561920/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36249186
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.966490
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author Samanta, Tannistha
Gopalan, Kaushik
Devi, Tanmay
author_facet Samanta, Tannistha
Gopalan, Kaushik
Devi, Tanmay
author_sort Samanta, Tannistha
collection PubMed
description Globally, a gender gap in COVID-19 has been noted with men reporting higher share of both morbidity and deaths compared to women. While the gender gap in fatalities has been similar across the globe, there have been interesting disparities in the detection of COVID-19 cases in men and women. While wealthier, more developed nations have generally seen similar case detection in men and women, LMICs especially in Asia have seen far greater proportion of COVID-19 cases among men than women. We utilize age and sex-disaggregated data from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu across two waves of the pandemic (May 2020 – Nov 2020, and March 2021, to June 2021) and find that there were only ~70% as many detected COVID-19 cases among women as there were among men. Our initial reading suggested that this might be a protective effect of lower labor force participation rates among women across much of South Asia. However, subsequent sero-prevalence results from Tamil Nadu conducted on October-November 2020, and June-July, 2021 suggest that infection incidence has been similar among men and women; as is the case in countries with better health infrastructure. This empirical puzzle suggests that reduced case detection among women cannot be immediately associated with limited public exposure, but rather evidence of a chronic neglect of women in healthcare access. Overall, we contend that an attention to the gender context holds promise to effective interventions in detection and prevention that goes beyond the traditional epidemiological logic of diseases.
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spelling pubmed-95619202022-10-15 Blocked by Gender: Disparities in COVID19 infection detection in Tamil Nadu, India Samanta, Tannistha Gopalan, Kaushik Devi, Tanmay Front Public Health Public Health Globally, a gender gap in COVID-19 has been noted with men reporting higher share of both morbidity and deaths compared to women. While the gender gap in fatalities has been similar across the globe, there have been interesting disparities in the detection of COVID-19 cases in men and women. While wealthier, more developed nations have generally seen similar case detection in men and women, LMICs especially in Asia have seen far greater proportion of COVID-19 cases among men than women. We utilize age and sex-disaggregated data from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu across two waves of the pandemic (May 2020 – Nov 2020, and March 2021, to June 2021) and find that there were only ~70% as many detected COVID-19 cases among women as there were among men. Our initial reading suggested that this might be a protective effect of lower labor force participation rates among women across much of South Asia. However, subsequent sero-prevalence results from Tamil Nadu conducted on October-November 2020, and June-July, 2021 suggest that infection incidence has been similar among men and women; as is the case in countries with better health infrastructure. This empirical puzzle suggests that reduced case detection among women cannot be immediately associated with limited public exposure, but rather evidence of a chronic neglect of women in healthcare access. Overall, we contend that an attention to the gender context holds promise to effective interventions in detection and prevention that goes beyond the traditional epidemiological logic of diseases. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-09-30 /pmc/articles/PMC9561920/ /pubmed/36249186 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.966490 Text en Copyright © 2022 Samanta, Gopalan and Devi. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Public Health
Samanta, Tannistha
Gopalan, Kaushik
Devi, Tanmay
Blocked by Gender: Disparities in COVID19 infection detection in Tamil Nadu, India
title Blocked by Gender: Disparities in COVID19 infection detection in Tamil Nadu, India
title_full Blocked by Gender: Disparities in COVID19 infection detection in Tamil Nadu, India
title_fullStr Blocked by Gender: Disparities in COVID19 infection detection in Tamil Nadu, India
title_full_unstemmed Blocked by Gender: Disparities in COVID19 infection detection in Tamil Nadu, India
title_short Blocked by Gender: Disparities in COVID19 infection detection in Tamil Nadu, India
title_sort blocked by gender: disparities in covid19 infection detection in tamil nadu, india
topic Public Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9561920/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36249186
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.966490
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