Health officials have been saying for months that younger adults were the driving force behind the spread of COVID-19 in the US. But new research suggests there is another age group that could fuel new cases of the virus: people aged 35 to 49 years.
This is the conclusion of a recent study by Imperial College in the United Kingdom. The study, published in the journal Science, analyzed mobility data from more than 10 million Americans from mobile phones between early February and late October 2020. The data helped researchers, among other things, determine where people were going, such as restaurants and grocery stores. The researchers then compared the data with COVID-19 cases and death rates by age.
The researchers concluded in the study that the “majority of COVID-19 infections” came from people between the ages of 20 and 49, but people between 35 and 49 were responsible for 41.1 percent of the new cases of the virus. The researchers in the study in the late thirties and forties drove the spread of the virus, but the “estimated contributions” of people between the ages of 20 and 34 were higher in the southern, southwestern, and western regions of the United States. State.
“This study provides evidence that the emerging COVID-19 epidemics in 2020 in the U.S. were reopened by adults aged 20-49, and especially adults aged 35-49, before and after school,” the researchers wrote. “After reopening the school in October 2020, these adults were responsible for an estimated 72.2 percent of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the United States.”
The findings overlap with research shared by the CDC in September. That study analyzed data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia and found that 20 percent of COVID-19 cases between March and August 2020 in the U.S. were in 20- to 29-year-olds – the highest percentage of all age groups. The report also found that there was a decrease in the median age of people infected with COVID-19, from 46 years in May to 38 years in August.
So, what’s going on here? The latest data suggest that “due to work, school and general activities, the middle ages generally move a lot compared to the elderly or very young”, studies co-author, dr. Samir Bhatt, associate professor of geostatistics in the Department of Infection Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London, tells Yahoo Life. This, he says, increases the risk of infection – and of transmitting the virus to others. But Bhatt adds that it is “difficult to unravel” exactly what is happening “apart from the fact that they generally move more.”
Middle-aged people may also have more contacts than those younger and older, co-author Oliver Ratmann, a lecturer in statistics at Imperial College London, tells Yahoo Life. And, he adds, these contacts could include people who are ‘very susceptible to COVID-19 infection’.
Yet, says Bhatt, “the exact reason is speculation at this stage – our work only looks at the signal in mobility, not at the factors that drive that mobility.”
The expert on infectious diseases, dr. Amesh A. Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety, tells Yahoo Life that the data is not shocking. “We have seen for a while that younger groups of 20 to 49 years are driving the spread,” he says. Adalja says it’s not entirely clear what’s going on ‘, but he has some theories. More contacts than younger or older groups is one.
“It could be that they work more outside the home and interact with individuals than other ages,” he says. And since this age group usually has a lower risk of serious complications from COVID-19, they can be “more risk-tolerant” and relaxed to prevent the spread of the virus, Adalja says.
Ratmann says his findings suggest that ‘non-pharmaceutical interventions’ such as masking and clear guidance on preventing the spread of the virus are ‘so important’ in controlling the spread of COVID-19. “Even with strong interventions and guidance, sections of the population will still have to move for various reasons,” he says. “Even though the defenseless are being vaccinated, measures must be taken to control the sections of the population that are still spreading widely.”
Adalja says the study and other data raise the possibility that people who vaccinate middle-aged people earlier could help control the spread of the virus. “It’s clear from this data where the focus should be on public health,” he says. “There may be a theoretical benefit to vaccinating the group of individuals to reduce spread.”
For the latest coronavirus news and updates, follow along https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus. According to experts, people over the age of 60 and those with an immune system are at greatest risk. If you have any questions, please refer to the CDCs and WIE’s resource guides.
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Originally published