Better hygiene and sanitation in the rich and developed countries could, paradoxically, be one of the reasons for the high rates of coronavirus-related deaths there, a new study by Indian scientists has indicated, lending credence to what is known as the ‘hygiene hypothesis’. The study has tried to find possible explanations for the fact that lower-income countries, with higher population densities and much lower sanitation standards, seem to have recorded much lesser coronavirus-related deaths compared to richer, more developed, countries.
The study was published as a paper that is still to be peer-reviewed and was conducted by scientists from the National Centre for Cell Sciences, Pune, and Chennai Mathematical Institute. Researchers looked at data available in the public domain of 106 countries. They compared these stats based on 24 parameters that included population density, demography, and quality of sanitation. It was also found that the death rate was higher in high-income countries, due to COVID-19, as compared to the middle, and low-income countries. These countries also had a high prevalence of autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes, psoriasis, and asthma. “Per million population (deaths) number appears to be high in countries that are richer and having high GDP and (in) countries with low GDP, less number of people are dying, which is very paradoxical,” said Shekhar Mande, a former NCCS director who is a co-author of the paper, reported Deccan Herald.
The researchers have analysed various developmental parameters, including measures of water and sanitation, and Covid-19 deaths per million in over 100 countries and has found that the poorer the water-sanitation scores, the lower the deaths per million. Several immunological studies in the past have suggested that exposure to bacterial or parasitic infections can strengthen the immune system against any future infections. Parveen Kumar, an epidemiologist with the Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College in Kangra and an author of a similar paper, ‘Covid-19 mortality: Probable role of microbiome to explain mortality’ too suggested the same.
