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CLAIM:

 “People with blood group A are at higher risk of being infected with COVID-19” 

ANSWER: 

There is no proven link.

This is from a research paper states that it “reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.”


Further Information

This claim comes from a preprint in a research paper which clearly states that it “has not been peer-reviewed”, and “reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.”

As a consequence, Sakthivel Vaiyapuri, Associate Professor in Cardiovascular & Venom Pharmacology at the University of Reading, writes that “to date, we don’t have robust scientific evidence to prove that our blood group has a direct relationship with COVID-19 infection”.

In particular, Dr Vayapuri highlights that “the researchers have also not explained why they failed to see a significant difference between the blood groups in the Shenzhen hospital. And given COVID-19 is a pandemic, the sample size that they have analysed is not sufficient to draw firm conclusions”.

SOURCES

Jiao Zhao et al. School of Medicine, The Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China.

MEDRXIV

Sakthivel Vaiyapuri. Associate Professor in Cardiovascular & Venom Pharmacology, University of Reading.


Origin of Claim

As seen on Twitter

FULL TEXT OF CLAIM

It seems that people with blood group A have a significantly higher risk for acquiring #COVID_19 compared with non-A, whereas blood group O has a significantly lower risk for the infection compared with non-O.

#coronavirus #blood_groups

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