People with blood type O are less likely to spread Covid-19?

I have blood type O, many people think that this blood group has a low risk of Covid-19 infection, is it true or false, doctor? (Tuan, Hanoi)

I have been exposed to F0 many times, currently do not have the disease. Do people with blood type O like me have better resistance than other blood types? Does blood type affect the risk of Covid-19 infection?


The human ABO blood group system is determined by the presence or absence of A and B antigens on the surface of red blood cells, each person has one of the four main blood groups: A, B, AB and O (without A and B antigens). ). Blood group antigens are abundant on the surface of red blood cells, but very little on the surface of other cells. Besides, Covid-19 disease involves respiratory mucosa, has a very complicated molecular mechanism, virus mainly penetrates respiratory mucosa cells but not blood cells (nor infects blood cells). via the blood stream). Therefore, it is difficult to confirm that blood type affects the risk of infection as well as the progression of Covid-19.

However, some researchers around the world have hypothesized to find out the correlation between ABO blood group and Covid-19. The results of some studies show that people with blood type O tend to have the lowest rate of Covid-19 compared to other groups. However, most of the studies are single, only looking at data from a small group of individuals, there are many factors that can cause the results to be biased.

For example, on the surface of red blood cells, there are actually 36 blood group systems with more than 300 different blood groups… to confirm that more research is needed with more subjects, multivariate analysis, and more depth. Therefore, the results are for reference only. The literature to this point, as well as the professional societies on blood transfusion, states that: there does not appear to be any relationship between blood type and severity of illness or death related to Covid- 19, does not support the use of ABO blood type as a predictor of disease, disease progression, or viral mortality.

The risk of infection as well as the severity of the disease depends on many factors. The fact that you have been exposed to a lot of F0 but have not yet been infected could be because your immune system is good, or because of the testing process, the quality of the test, the speed of the test, or the wrong time of sampling… If you have been exposed to F0, have typical Covid-19 symptoms but negative rapid test should not be subjective, need to be monitored for 5-7 days, limit contact with people around.

Doctor Tran Ngoc Que

National Blood Center, National Institute of Hematology – Blood Transfusion


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