A paramedic brings a patient to the Hackensack Meridian Health Palisades Medical Center in North Bergen, New Jersey on December 11, 2020 after an emergency.
Kena Betancur | AFP | Getty Images
Dr. Paul Offit, a physician at Philadelphia Children’s Hospital, said he now sees more patients with a rare inflammatory condition, a complication of Covid-19, than he has ever seen since the pandemic began.
In Texas, dr. James McDeavitt, dean for clinical affairs at Baylor College of Medicine, said he and his colleagues note an increase in the admission of young people with Covid-19, although he does not yet have hard data to provide the anecdotal support. testimony.
Both doctors attributed the increase in hospital visits of teenagers and young adults, at least in part, to B.1.1.7, the coronavirus variant first identified in the UK that is now the most common strain according to public health officials circulating in the US. variant is highly contagious, presumably becoming about 60% more transmissible than the original strain of the virus.
“I think they get infected more often because of the virus’ infectivity,” said Offit, a health expert in virology and immunology. He also serves on advisory panels for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. “Therefore, I think you will see and see more diseases in children and young adults.
CDC Director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said earlier this month that hospitals are seeing more and more younger adults being admitted with Covid-19 as new, more contagious variants of the virus that are spreading faster than ever before. Nationwide, the number of 18- to 64-year-olds visiting emergency departments at Covid is increasing, while the number of visits among patients 65 and older is declining, according to a slide presented by Walensky at a news conference last week.
“Cases and emergency visits are up,” Walensky said. “We are seeing this increase in younger adults, most of whom have not yet been vaccinated.”
In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo said last week that the state sees the Covid positivity rate rise among people ages 18 to 24. In Michigan, where Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are increasing rapidly, cases of all time are high. for those 19 years and younger, according to state data published on April 6, hospital admissions are increasing for all age groups, with the largest increase in people between the ages of 40 and 49, according to state data.
Health experts say the issue is multifaceted: older teens and young adults were among the last priority to get the Covid-19 vaccines, and many of them have not yet had the chance. In addition, young adults are thought to be involved in more high-risk behaviors, such as engaging in close contact sports, going to bars, attending unmasked events, or traveling.
These factors, together with the highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant, are likely to lead to an increase in young people going to the hospital, health experts say.
We see ‘fewer diseases in the elderly due to vaccination, so proportionally we will now see more disease among young adults’, said dr. Stephen Schrantz, an infectious disease expert at UChicago Medicine, said. It is still unclear how many of these are. increase is due to the B.1.1.7 voltage alone.
Isaac Bogoch, a specialist in infectious diseases at the University of Toronto, said there is emerging evidence to suggest that B.1.1.7 causes more symptoms and worse diseases. He said health officials in the U.S. and in other countries where the tension prevails could see a shift toward young people who have not been vaccinated, in hospitals or even in the ICU.
“There are things that are not currently working in our favor, it is B.1.1.7 and other variants that are of concern,” he said.
Although more young people may become ill, Schrantz of UChicago said he does not expect many of them to become seriously ill, especially not school-age children. He said young adults with comorbidities such as obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes are probably at greatest risk.
“The severity of the disease is mainly based on two factors: the virus and the host,” Schrantz said.
“While the virus is changing, I do not believe that the mutations in the ear protein will have an increased virulence in children, because their bodies, and more specifically their immune systems, respond only less severely to the virus. In other words, I think the ‘host is the most important variable compared to changes in the virus,’ he said.
Offit said he expects things to improve as the U.S. vaccinates more adults, regardless of age, adding that it will become more difficult for the virus to spread from person to person because more people have antibodies.
According to Thursday, more than 125 million Americans received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine, according to information compiled by the CDC. That’s about 37% of the total U.S. population.
Young people ‘live in the flock’, Offit said. “The more the herd is vaccinated, the less the virus can spread.”