Letter to Editor in response to Dr. Gupta

We previously published Covid-19-related infection and mortality data of healthcare workers (HCWs) from 37 countries (Erdem and Lucey, 2021Erdem H. Lucey D.R. Healthcare worker infections and deaths due to COVID-19: a survey from 37 nations and a call for WHO to post national data on their website.Int J Infect Dis. 2021; 102: 239-241Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (134) Google Scholar). We have read the letter by Deepak Gupta focusing on the apparent differences in mortality among medical doctors and nurses with Covid-19 for some of the countries in our paper. The data for HCWs and COVID-19 is a matter of great concern worldwide. We presented a descriptive analysis in our paper and provided the data from many countries in accordance with their official data. If official data were not publicly available, we included data provided by our collaborators in these countries from their reliable sources. Hence, our paper was not an outcome analysis examining the factors contributing to mortality among HCWs, but the descriptive data from reliable sources in the participating countries. Of note, we did not have any age-related or comorbidity data to include in our report. Lastly, we would like to take this opportunity to emphasize that we did not present data on mortality rates according to gender; this applied to both doctors and nurses. Thus, we avoided the speculative explanations referenced by Dr. Gupta, whether hormonal or behavioral, in the absence of any data in our publication on gender-specific mortality rates. None to declare. None to declare.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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