The global pandemic has led a lot of people to re-evaluate their priorities and, perhaps for the first time, consider their own mortality. As we continue to learn more about the virus, which to date has cost more than 24,500 US lives, it's become startlingly clear that COVID-19 doesn't just threaten the elderly and immunocompromised. Young and healthy people are succumbing to the virus too, and according to research, more men than women are dying from it. It's reportedly for this reason that men are suddenly rushing to freeze their sperm — just in case.
According to the Daily Beast, men aren't exactly flocking to sperm banks right now.
Instead, they are purchasing at-home sperm collection kits from online retailers, in a surprising new e-commerce trend. In fact, Heather Kilpatrick, operations manager for CryoChoice, says business is "booming" lately, with a lot of inquiries coming in "from people scared about coronavirus."
In fact, the Daily Beast reported that business has jumped 20% over the last two weeks at CryoChoice. And so has that of their rivals.
Over at the start-up collection kit company Legacy, staffers said they’ve seen up to 10 times their usual order volume. Another company, Dadi, has also seen a spike in sales, and claimed that people are buying five years' worth of sperm storage.
Men may also have another reason for rushing to freeze sperm.
As fears over the coronavirus have mounted, researchers have raised concerns over whether merely having the virus could impact a man's sperm quality later.
That may seem like a bit of a stretch, but apparently, it's not.
Last month, Professor Li Yufeng of China suggested that coronavirus patients may want to go for reproductive testing after they recover from the virus. That's because doctors have observed that COVID-19 has many similarities to the severe acute respiratory syndrome virus, aka SARS, which was found to leave "serious immune system damage in the testicles of some male patients," according to the Daily Mail.
It's important to note that there's simply no hard data to prove that COVID-19 negatively impacts male fertility.
Still, Yufeng and many other researchers have said the possibility is real and could have lasting impacts.
"For men who have had the infection, especially those who need to reproduce, it is best to undergo relevant fertility tests, such as sperm quality and hormone level tests, upon recovery to detect possible problems as soon as possible," read a report by Tongji Hospital that Yufeng wrote.
There's also another issue with the coronavirus that has men worried.
According to the Fertility Centers of New England, elevated core body temperatures have been found to negatively impact male fertility. (In other words: prolonged fevers.) This has apparently been on the minds of a lot of men lately — particularly those who have been struggling to conceive with their partner for some time.
“You can’t say, ‘Don’t worry about the fever now, you’ll be better in three months,’ to a fertility patient,” Grace Centola, Dadi’s science director, told the Daily Beast. “They will be very upset. They’ll go crazy. Because to them, time is of the essence now.”
For the time being at least, simply not enough is known about the coronavirus to say for certain whether rushing to buy a sperm collection kit is even worth it. But for those who would rather give themselves peace of mind, there's certainly no harm in freezing a few samples for the future, just to be sure.
