Top coronavirus doctor reveals who are at higher risk of dying

Beijing : Patients with hypertension are at higher risk of dying due to coronavirus, said a top Chinese doctor who has been treating the infected people since mid-January.

While there's been no published research yet explaining why, Chinese doctors working in Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the virus first emerged, have noticed that infected patients with that underlying illness are more likely to slip into severe distress and die.

Among a group of 170 patients who died in Wuhan due to coronavirus, half of them were suffering from hypertension. 

"That's a very high ratio," said Du Bin, director of the intensive care unit at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, in an interview with Bloomberg over the phone from Wuhan.

"From what I was told by other doctors and the data I can see myself, among all the underlying diseases, hypertension is a key dangerous factor," said Du, one of the most respected critical care experts in China. "Though there is no research published on that yet, we believe hypertension could be an important factor in causing patients to deteriorate, leading to a bad prognosis."

Coronavirus has infected around 1,08,000 people in less than three months.