The link of the disease with high altitude regions has prompted researchers to speculate.
Researchers have found that populations living at higher altitudes, particularly 3,000 meters (9,842 feet) above sea level, report significantly lower levels of coronavirus infections than their counterparts Plains.
The Washington Post cited a peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Respiratory Physiology & Neurobiology, in which researchers from Australia, Bolivia, Canada and Switzerland examining epidemiological data from Bolivia, Ecuador and Tibet found that Tibet’s infection rate was “drastically” lower than that of plains China, three times lower in the Bolivian Andes than in the rest of the country and four times lower in the Ecuadorian Andes.
Cusco in Peru, a picturesque valley in the Andes, a town of 420,000 inhabitants located at high altitude, had not recorded the deaths of three tourists from Mexico, China and Great Britain, between March 23 and April 3, at the start of the strict national locking of Peru. Since then, there have been no other Covid-19-related deaths in the entire Cusco region, although the disease has claimed the lives of more than 4,000 people nationwide.
The infections also remained weak. Only 916 of Peru’s 141,000 cases come from the Cusco region, which means that its contagion rate is more than 80% lower than the national average.
The disease is link to high altitude regions prompted researchers to speculate that the coronavirus gets “ soroche ”, the Quechua word for altitude sickness.
Similarly, Ecuador has suffered one of the worst epidemics in Latin America, with more than 38,000 cases reported and more than 3,300 deaths, according to official figures. But he focused on the peaceful port of Guayaquil. The 8,387 cases of Bolivia were concentrated in the department of Santa Cruz, a few hundred feet above sea level. But the department of La Paz, which is home to the highest capital in the world, is not only had 410 cases.
Researchers speculate that populations living at high altitudes could benefit from a combination of an ability to cope with hypoxia (low oxygen levels in the blood) and a natural environment hostile to the virus – including dry mountain air, high levels of UV radiation and the possibility that lower barometric pressure will reduce the ability of the virus to linger in the air, the report said.
Only three populations in the world have been found to have genetic adaptations to altitude: the Himalayas, the Ethiopian mountain dwellers and the Andes. However, Clayton Cowl, a pulmonologist at the Mayo Clinic and former president of the American College of Chest Physicians, suspects that the trend could be more closely linked to acclimatization, the body’s ability to temporarily adapt to altitude, than DNA.
Cowl notes that prolonged exposure to altitude triggers a chain reaction in the lungs involving a protein called ACE2 that could prevent lung shunt, a common problem in COVID-19 patients.
Usually when part of the lung is damaged, the body redirects blood flow to healthier areas that are better able to absorb oxygen. The shunt stops this redirection process, leading to hypoxia. This is, according to Cowl, a common feature in about 30% of COVID-19 patients who have mild symptoms but who have unusually low levels of oxygen in their blood – and who sometimes take a sudden turn for the worst.
But researchers are still looking for more evidence to establish the response of high-altitude populations to the coronavirus, including the possibility that when infected, they are less sick and therefore less likely to seek medical treatment or tests.
“The virus loves people. No matter how high it is,” says Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.
“But we are still learning a lot about this disease, and that gives us good clues to try to understand its progression,” he added.
