Men are lagging behind women in seeking help for COVID-19 symptoms despite being more likely to test positive, according to statistics collected by the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
Data from the United States, China, and Italy suggest men are more likely to die from the illness, and health officials are intent on overturning the traditional male reluctance to visit the doctor.
President Trump announced on Thursday that the U.S. had conducted more than two million tests as health officials battle a pandemic that has killed 1600 people.
But Dr. Deborah Birx, a global health expert and the task force coordinator, said men needed to do a better job of getting help.
“I see a lot of men in the audience today. I just want to remind about them about the importance of health care,” she said during the regular White House briefing.
So far, women make up 56% of those tested for COVID-19, of which 16% were found to be infected by the virus, she added. In comparison, 23% of tested men were positive.
“It gives you an idea about how men often don’t present to the healthcare delivery system until they have greater symptom ontology,” she said.
“This is to all of our men out there, no matter what age group, if you have symptoms you should be tested,” Birx said.
Data collected from New York reveal the urgency. At the start of the week, the state health department reported that, of 4,758 deaths since March 14, 61% were men and 39% were women.
The state also recorded its highest single day death toll of 799 from Wednesday to Thursday.
Officials had braced the public for a tough week, but Dr. Anthony Fauci, an infectious diseases specialist, said there was good news in statistics that demonstrated social distancing was having an impact in New York.
“At the same time we are seeing the increase in deaths we are seeing a rather dramatic decrease in the need for hospitalizations,” he said. “Like, I think yesterday it was something like 200 new hospitalizations, and it has been as high as 1,400 at any given time, so that is going in the right direction.”
Dr. Fauci has repeatedly said that the death rate would lag behind the hospitalization rate and that it would be a mistake to conclude that mitigation efforts were not working even if the death toll went up.
“That means what we are doing is working, therefore, we need to continue to do it. I know I sound like a broken record — that’s because I want to sound like a broken record.”
