The number of people under the age of 40 with coronavirus who were to be admitted to intensive care exceeded that of older groups last month in Brazil. This is noted by research by the Brazilian Association of Intensive Medicine (AMIB). In particular, the number of people 39 years of age or younger hospitalized in Covid-19 intensive care units increased considerably in March and exceeded the 11,000 barrier, or 52.2% of the total, according to the ICU Project. At the beginning of the pandemic, this figure reached only 14.6%, and between September and February, 45%.
“Before, this was a population that normally only developed a less severe form of the disease and did not need intensive care. So the increase in this age group is very significant,” explained Dr. Ederlon Rezende, project coordinator, an AMIB initiative. According to Rezende, factors that could drive the rise of young hospitalized people include that most patients over the age of 80 are vaccinated and the propensity of children under the age of 40 either because they leave their homes to work or because they are less vulnerable.
Experts also attribute the situation to the new Brazilian variant of the virus, known as P1 or Manaus, whose figures suggest that it may reinfect people who contracted the original version of the virus. Brazil has numbered 13,482,023 confirmed cases of coronavirus (37,017 in the last 24 hours) since the beginning of the pandemic, of which 1,248,083 people have the active infection and 353,137 died from the disease (1,803 on the last day), the Ministry of Health reported on Sunday.
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