There are rumors floating around in the ocean of covid information and misinformation about the connection between COVID-19 and blood types. You may have heard that blood type O is less likely to catch covid. It certainly piqued my interest when I heard it. So, what’s true? What’s the science behind blood types and covid? Is type O safer? Says who? What about severity? Are any blood types more susceptible? I looked into it with all these questions about covid and blood types in mind, starting with…
What even are blood types?
To be honest, I didn’t know my own blood type until I had a baby last year. I’m O positive, by the way. Until recently, I never bothered to look up what that means. Fun fact for my fellow O positives, we are popular. Apparently, 37.4% of the population is O positive, making us the majority. If you’re curious about your blood type, here are the population stats:
| Blood Type | Occurrence in People | Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| O+ | 1 in 3 | 37.4% |
| O- | 1 in 15 | 6.6% |
| A+ | 1 in 3 | 35.7% |
| A- | 1 in 16 | 6.3% |
| Blood Type | Occurrence in People | Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| B+ | 1 in 12 | 8.5% |
| B- | 1 in 67 | 1.5% |
| AB+ | 1 in 29 | 3.4% |
| AB- | 1 in 167 | 0.6% |
This chart does not provide any information about a connection between blood types and covid. However, it does speak to all the rare blood types out there, and it’s saying “please donate!” All you O negatives, you’re the most in demand because you are the only universal donor.
Speaking from personal experience...I lost one fourth of my body's entire blood content at once when I gave birth. I'm forever grateful to whomever donated that bag of blood used for my transfusion.
so, How do blood types relate to covid?
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in late 2019, researchers have administered many population-based studies on the standard risk factors, including age, obesity, preexisting medical conditions, race, ethnicity, and sex. They have even investigated blood types as risk factors for covid.
This is not a new hypothesis to test, and blood type has been determined a valid risk factor in several disease processes, including infectious diseases. Blood types have been linked to bacterial and viral infections before; therefore, it’s not a stretch to assume that it might be a risk factor for covid as well.
What are people saying about blood types and covid, and what is true?
As everyone knows, social media platforms like Facebook and TikTok have algorithms, and those algorithms know what you like and how to show it to you. If, like me, you’re impatient and a fan of instant gratification, TikTok is the app for you. In 2020, the algorithm picked up, pretty quickly, that I was consuming covid news like chocolate cake.
For quite some time now, I have seen several posts, both serious and satire, talking about the link between covid and blood types. Overwhelmingly, the consensus was that type O blood is significantly less likely to catch covid than the other blood types. Of course, there were a few posts, often from the POV of a hospital bed with captions like, “I’m type O, and I got covid” that stated the contrary. Now we should ask the very vital question, “where is the thin line of truth in the nonsense?”
The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) published a study on July 18, 2021 from the Elsevier Public Health Emergency Collection about the relationship between blood type and covid infection (CLICK HERE to read). The question addressed was the same I’ve been discussing, the conclusion was (surprise, surprise!) significantly more convoluted than the videos on TikTok.
What do the studies say about blood types and covid?
What I learned is that there have been nine large studies on the correlation between blood type and covid-related illness, and most of them report that there is an association between the two. Eight of them reported association. Four of them found some blood types to be more severely affected by covid while five of them did not.
You may be asking, “what does that mean?” Well, it means that the studies were inconsistent. However, what they did find is plenty of very important information about covid and some overlapping trends. For example, several studies showed that type A might be more susceptible of infection while type O and Rh-negative groups may not be. Ultimately, the studies as a collective came to one important conclusion for now…
“At this point in time, there does not appear to be any relationship between blood type and COVID-19-related severity of illness or mortality. Current literature does not support blood type as a part of a predictive model of viral illness or mortality…”
PMCID: PMC8286549
is your blood type more or less vulnerable to covid?
Is type O less vulnerable to covid? The answer for now is no, and I think there is a valuable lesson to be learned here. If I placed all my trust in TikTok trends and shackled it to my mental vault as fact, I’d have assumed my husband, my son, and myself were all safe from covid because we all have O blood types, but I’d be wrong.
If you’re out there thinking you are covid-proof because you have a variation of the O blood type, please be careful. There is not yet nearly enough information on the blood types as a risk factor for covid, and no one is invincible.
Disclaimer: All the information in this article comes from a reputable, peer-reviewed source published by a medical journal. Nothing has been interpreted by myself or anyone other than medical professionals.
Click below to read more from pandemic-reset.com…
Source:
- Kim Y, Latz CA, DeCarlo CS, et al. Relationship between blood type and outcomes following COVID-19 infection [published online ahead of print, 2021 Jul 18]. Semin Vasc Surg. 2021;doi:10.1053/j.semvascsurg.2021.05.005
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