Differential mortality in COVID-19 patients from India and western countries

Abstract

Background and aims: COVID-19 disease has been associated with disproportionate mortality amongst world population. We try to elucidate various reasons for lower mortality rate in the Indian subcontinent due to COVID-19 pandemic. Method: We carried out a comprehensive review of the literature using suitable keywords such as ‘COVID-19’, ‘Pandemics’, ‘disease outbreaks’ and ‘India’ on the search engines of PubMed, SCOPUS, Google Scholar and Research Gate in the month of May 2020 during the current COVID-19 pandemic and assessed mortality data. Results: The mortality observed in Indian and south Asian subcontinent is lower than in the west. Multifactorial reasons indicated for this differential mortality due to COVID-19 have been described in the current literature. Conclusions: The effects of COVID-19 on the health of racial and ethnic minority groups are still emerging with disproportionate burden of illness and death amongst some black and ethnic minority groups. Overall the current COVID-19 related mortality appears to be lower in the health and resource challenged populous Indian subcontinent. Further scientific studies would be helpful to understand this disparity in mortality due to COVID-19 in the world population.