a recent china study suggests that people with blood type a might be more vulnerable to the coronavirus infection on the other hand people with blood type o might be resistant to it the study was conducted with 2000 coronavirus patients in wuhan and shenzhenthe study found that people with blood type a showed a higher rate of infection and were likely to form more severe symptoms the research though preliminary gives countries the chance to consider these differences when planning for measures to treat coronavirus patientsthe research was led by wang xinghuan from the centre for evidencebased and translational medicine at the zhongnan hospital of wuhan universityread alsocoronavirus recovery recovered washington patient recounts early symptoms of the diseaseshe was diagnosed positive only two weeks after attending a party from where she suspects she caught the infectionhe wrote people of blood group a might need particularly strengthened personal protection to reduce the chance of infection sarscov2infected patients with blood group a might need to receive more vigilant surveillance and aggressive treatmentaccording to a paper published on march 11 people with blood type o were less likely to catch the infectionout of the 206 patients who died from coronavirus in wuhan 85 had blood type a as compared to the 52 who had blood type othe report has been authored by scientists and doctors from beijing wuhan shanghai and shenzhen gao yingdai a researcher with the state key laboratory of experimental hematology in tianjin said the results could be improved with larger sample size though 2000 was not small it is dwarfed by the total number of patients infected by the coronavirus now exceeding 180000 globallyanother limitation of the report is that it provides no clear explanation of the phenomenon like the molecular interaction between the virus and the blood cells gao said blood types can be identified by a specific antigen found on the red blood cells that trigger a specific immune responsewang who led the research wrote in the paper it might be helpful to introduce abo blood typing in both patients and medical personnel as a routine part of the management of sarscov2 and other coronavirus infections to help define the management options and assess risk exposure levels of peoplegao said the results of the new study may be helpful to medical professionals but ordinary citizens should not take the statistics too seriously if you are type a there is no need to panic it does not mean you will be infected 100 per centthe report also does not suggest that people with blood type o are completely safe they still need to wash their hands and take all necessary precautions laid down by the world health organisationalso see coronavirus prevention coronavirus symptoms coronavirus treatment