A paramedic is transferring a patient to an emergency room at Hackensack Meridian Health Palisades Medical Center in North Bergen, New Jersey, on December 11, 2020.
Got Betancur | AFP | Getty Images
Dr. Paul Offit, a physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 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 of clinical affairs at Baylor College of Medicine, said he and his colleagues were seeing an increase in admissions of young people with Covid-19, although he did not yet have difficult data to support anecdotal evidence.
Both doctors attributed the increase in the number of visits to adolescents and young adults, at least in part, to B.1.1.7, the coronavirus variant first identified in the UK, which public health officials say is now the most common strain. circulating in the US. the variant is extremely contagious, considered to be about 60% more transmissible than the original strain of the virus.
“I think it gets infected more often because of the virus’s contagion,” said Offit, a health expert in virology and immunology who also served on advisory panels for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. “So, for this reason, I think you will see and you will 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 admitted with Covid-19 as new and more contagious variants of the virus spread faster than ever. Nationwide, the number of young people between the ages of 18 and 64 who visit emergency departments with Covid is rising, while the number of visits to patients aged 65 and over is declining, according to a slide presented by Walensky at a news briefing last week.
“Cases and visits to the emergency room are up,” Walensky said. “We are seeing these increases in younger adults, most of whom have not yet been vaccinated.”
In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said last week that the state is seeing an increase in the Covid positivity rate among people between the ages of 18 and 24. In Michigan, where Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are growing rapidly, case rates are at an all-time high for people 19 and younger, according to state data released on April 6th. Hospitalizations are increasing in all age groups, the largest increase being observed in people aged between 40 and 49, according to state data.
Health experts say the problem is multifaceted: older teens and younger adults have been among the latest priorities to receive Covid-19 vaccines, and many have not yet received the vaccines. In addition, young adults are considered to be involved in high-risk behaviors, such as practicing close contact sports, going to bars, attending unmasked meetings, or traveling.
These factors, correlated with the highly contagious variant B.1.1.7, probably cause an increase in young people going to the hospital, say health specialists.
We see “fewer diseases in the elderly because of vaccination, so we will proportionally see more diseases in young adults now,” said Dr. Stephen Schrantz, an infectious disease expert at Chicago Medicine, adding that it is still unclear how much hence the increase is due only to strain B.1.1.7.
Isaac Bogoch, a specialist in infectious diseases at the University of Toronto, said there is evidence that B.1.1.7 causes more symptoms and more severe diseases. He said health officials in the United States and other countries where the strain is spreading could see a shift to unvaccinated youth arriving in hospitals or even ICUs.
“There are things that are not working in our favor right now, which is B.1.1.7 and other variants of concern,” he said.
Although several young people may become ill, Schrantz of Chicago said he did not expect many of them to become seriously ill, especially school-age children. He said young adults with comorbidities such as obesity, hypertension and diabetes are probably most at risk.
The severity of the disease is predominantly based on two factors – the virus and the host, Schrantz said.
“As the virus changes, I don’t think mutations in the spike protein will have increased virulence in children because their body, and more specifically their immune system, reacts less severely to the virus. In other words, I think the host is the more important variable compared to changes in the virus, “he said.
Offit said things are expected to improve as the US vaccinates more adults, regardless of age, adding that the virus will become more difficult to spread from person to person because more people have antibodies.
As of Thursday, more than 125 million Americans have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to data compiled by the CDC. This represents about 37% of the total US population.
Young people “live in the herd,” Offit said. “The more vaccinated the herd, the less the virus can spread.”