Sperm quality has declined as a result of lockdown.
Sperm quality has suffered due to the coronavirus pandemic
A study suggests that people adopting more sedentary lifestyles in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic is thought to have contributed to a deterioration in sperm quality over the past couple of years.
Experts at the University of Manchester studied the swimmers of over 6,700 men who donated at four sperm banks in Denmark between 2017 and 2022.
They found that sperm count and motility increased from 2017 to 2019 but there was a decline of 22 per cent in the amount of sperm that can move on their own in the following years as the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the globe.
Professor Allan Pacey, the co-author of the study, admits that the sperm quality drop came as a shock.
He said: "We saw quite a precipitous decline in sperm motility which we weren't expecting. Given that the change happens between 2019 and 2020, we hypothesised that the only thing that happened at any point of any external significance was the Covid pandemic.
"We're not suggesting that it's the virus that is the cause, because there's not really a lot of evidence that the virus affects sperm.
"But we thought about what else changed at that time and of course, everybody's sitting at home, not going to work, probably doing less exercise, watching more Netflix or eating different stuff.
"It just seemed to be fairly plausible that it was a lifestyle choice."