As the coronavirus spread from China to other parts of the world, millennials shrugged their shoulders at the advice of public health authorities and continued to spill out of bars, restaurants, gleefully tweet about cheap vacation airfare and plan get-togethers.
However, new evidence from Europe and the U.S. suggests that younger adults aren’t as impervious to the novel coronavirus that’s circulating worldwide as originally thought.
Despite initial data from China that showed elderly people and those with other health conditions were most vulnerable, young people — from twenty-somethings to those in their early forties — are falling seriously ill. Many require intensive care, according to reports from Italy and France. The risk is particularly dire for those with ailments that haven’t yet been diagnosed.
Earlier this week, French health ministry official Jérôme Salomon said half the 300 to 400 coronavirus patients treated in ICUs in Paris were younger than 65 years and, according to numbers presented at a seminar of intensive care specialists, half the ICU patients in the Netherlands were under the age of 50.
eople gather in South Pointe Park at sunset on March 18, 2020 in Miami Beach, Florida. Miami Beach city officials closed the area of the beach that is popular with college spring breakers and asked them to refrain from large gatherings where COVID-19 could spread.
Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images
In Italy, the hardest hit country in Europe, almost a quarter of the nearly 28,000 coronavirus patients are between the ages of 19 and 50, according to data website Statista.
And similarly in the U.S., 705 of the nearly 2,500 first coronavirus cases, were aged 20 to 44, reports the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.Between 15 per cent and 20 per cent eventually ended up in the hospital, including as many as four per cent who needed intensive care. Few died.
“It may have been that the millennial generation, our largest generation, our future generation that will carry us through for the next multiple decades, here may be a disproportional number of infections among that group,” Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said in a press conference on Wednesday, citing the reports.
President Donald Trump himself reinforced her warning, “We don’t want them gathering, and I see they do gather, including on beaches and in restaurants, young people. They don’t realize, and they’re feeling invincible.”
One of those younger adults is Clement Chow, an assistant professor of genetics at the University of Utah. According to his Twitter posts, Chow had a low-grade fever for a few days and then a bad cough that led to respiratory failure. It turned out to be the coronavirus. He ended up on high flow oxygen in the ICU. “I’m young and not high risk, yet I am in the ICU with a very severe case,” Chow said in a March 15 tweet. “We really don’t know much about this virus.”
Hi guys. Have you missed me? I’ve been in the ICU fighting…wait for it…Coronavirus!
— Clement “beating COVID19” Chow (@ClementYChow) March 15, 2020
Chow didn’t give his age in the tweets, but his laboratory website indicates he graduated from college in 2003 and has two unruly children. He didn’t respond to an email and Bloomberg was unable to independently confirm his status as a patient.
When he arrived last Thursday, he was the first patient there. “Now there are many more,” he tweeted.
The CDC report did not specify if the younger patients had underlying conditions that might make them more vulnerable, but Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Diseases, commented on a CNN show on Wednesday night that some did.
Public health experts say it’s difficult to compare coronavirus numbers by age across countries at this stage due to the limited numbers tested and that differences may be due to the environment, lifestyle, demographics or something about the virus itself. For instance, some of the young people who get tested may live in cities or industrial areas with a lot of pollution, which impacts their susceptibility to serious respiratory illnesses. Or the bar for admission to the hospital and the quality of treatments may vary enough by country that it impacts the course of the illness.
It’s still true that the older one gets, the higher the health risk from contracting the virus. While there were only 144 patients over age 85, as many as 70 per cent were hospitalized and 29 per cent needed intensive care, according to the CDC report. One in four died, the agency said in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Students wearing a free facemasks amid concerns over the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus attend tuition at the Footpath School in Ahmedabad on late March 19, 2020.
SAM PANTHAKY / AFP
Infants and toddlers may also face a higher health risk from contracting the virus, than initially believed. In a study of more than 2,000 young children with COVID-19 from China, published this week in Pediatrics, Chinese doctors found that about 11 per cent of cases in infants were judged to be severe or critical, as were seven per cent of those in toddlers and preschoolers. Although the rate is still lower than that of adults, it’s hardly insignificant.
As public health officials implore younger people to stop socializing outside, and campuses across the country close down, even the most conscientious of younger adults are left with a difficult choice — risk exposing their families and older relatives to the virus should they return home.
Livia Calari’s father has been begging her to come home for weeks. The 25-year-old and her boyfriend live in Brooklyn, New York, and have been nervously watching the warnings from officials intensify and the city they live in shut down. But they’re staying put, for now at least.
The couple has two cats they’d have to move. If they did hunker down with Calari’s father in Washington, D.C., they would be asked to self-quarantine on a separate floor for two weeks. Plus, the thought of accidentally bringing the virus worries them.
“I have a lot of anxiety, maybe irrationally, about bringing it to him,” Calari said of her father, who’s 65. “I would feel awful.”
After days of thinking over their options, they decided to stay in New York and re-evaluate if a lockdown gets to the point where they can’t even leave their apartment to take walks.
Officials, in the meanwhile, are willing to go to unusual lengths to get the word out to young people where they’ll be heard, even if that means being interviewed on the Pardon My Take podcast from Barstool Sports –— one of the most popular sports shows with younger listeners.
Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the hosts how stressful the outbreak has been.
“You cannot imagine,” he said. “You see what happened in China, you see what’s happening in Italy. We have the virus in the United States, and we want to make sure by our efforts that we don’t have that degree of disease and suffering that we are seeing in other countries.”
And he called on young people to embrace the effort to protect themselves and the broader population.
“No one is invulnerable, but even if you are doing very well, you have to be a very important part of our national effort to contain the outbreak,” Fauci said. “You are not a passive person in this. You are an important part of the active plan to contain this epidemic. We really do need you. This isn’t something that can be successful without you.”
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
