By What is the risk to young people?
So far, the message that the older you are, the more at risk you are of experiencing complications related to Covid-19, has been clear. But as the World Health Organisation warns that young people are not invincible, we ask, what is the risk of coronavirus to young people?
It had been thought that Covid-19 did not pose any great threat to healthy young people.
But, it has now been confirmed that a 21-year-old woman with no underlying health conditions has now died from Covid-19.
Chloe Middleton, from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, died on the 21st of March.
Her mother, Diane Middleton, said:
“To all the people out there that thinks it’s just a virus please think again.”
Her aunt, Emily Mistry, added:
“She had no underlying health issues. My loved ones are going through the most unimaginable pain. We are shattered beyond belief Please, please adhere to government guidelines. The virus isn’t spreading, people are spreading the virus.”
Miss Middleton is the youngest person in the UK with no known pre-existing health conditions to have died from the virus.
Speaking the day after an 18-year-old with an underlying health condition died of the virus in the UK, A&E doctor Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, warned that the illness was “not simply limited to the elderly and those with underlying health conditions”.
It remains the case that overall, those who are already ill or elderly are more at risk.
Researchers at Imperial College London have identified a clear link between age and the likelihood of being hospitalised with coronavirus. And older people were much more likely to need critical care.
Fewer than 5% of under-50s have been hospitalised because of their symptoms, compared to 24% for 70-79-year-olds.
However, statistics are formed using averages, and individuals are not averages.
So, there are almost certainly younger people who will suffer more severely should they contract coronavirus.
One study of over 2000 children who had contracted the virus identified that:
“Although clinical manifestations of children’s Covid-19 cases were generally less severe than those of adults’ patients, young children, particularly infants, were vulnerable to infection”.
The World Health Organisation added:
“Although the evidence we have suggests that those over 60 are at highest risk, young people, including children, have died”.
They warned that coronavirus seems to be considerably more infectious than flu, and that each person with the virus, on average, passes it on to between two and three other people.
Therefore, regardless of age, or of the risk to young people, prevention through social distancing is still the best course of action.
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