Researchers have found that populations living in higher altitudes, especially 3,000 metres above the sea level, significantly report lower levels of coronavirus infections than their lowland counterparts.
The Washington Post cited one peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Respiratory Physiology & Neurobiology, in which researchers from Australia, Bolivia, Canada and Switzerland looking at epidemiological data from Bolivia, Ecuador and Tibet found that Tibet’s infection rate was “drastically” lower than that of lowland China, three times lower in the Bolivian Andes than in the rest of the country and four times lower in the Ecuadoran Andes.
Cusco in Peru, a picturesque Andean valley, the high-altitude city of 420,000 residents, had only recorded the death of three tourists from Mexico, China and Britain, between March 23 and April 3, at the start of Peru’s strict national lockdown. Since then, there has not been another covid-19 fatality in the entire Cusco region, even as the disease has claimed more than 4,000 lives nationally.