The average age of coronavirus patients dropped by 15 years, according to White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, that the initial outbreak extended was extended and led to a resurgence of cases in the US. He clarified that it is not a second wave.
“It’s a serious situation that we have to address immediately,” he said.
The number of coronavirus cases soared again after some states started reopening their economies in May.
“The average age of people getting infected now is a decade and a half younger than it was a few months ago particularly when New York and New Orleans and Chicago were getting hit very badly,” Fauci said.
According to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the median age of new Covid-19 patients in his state has reached a low of 33.
“Now why is that important? Well, because this is a virus that does not affect all age groups equally. It’s much more lethal for people who are in their 80s and 90s than it is in your 20s and 30s,” DeSantis said.
Fatality rate
Meanwhile, the mortality rate is lower among Gen Y and millennials. He said that many of these cases are asymptomatic. “Just because you’re 21 and you may not have significant symptoms that does not mean you can’t affect other people and I think that’s something that we’re concerned about,” he said.
“They could infect someone who infects someone, and then all of a sudden someone’s grandmother, grandfather or aunt who’s getting chemotherapy for breast cancer gets infected,” Fauci said. “You’re part of the propagation of the pandemic, so it’s your responsibility to yourself as well as to society to avoid infection.”
Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, explained that the virus presents a greater risk to those with existing health conditions, such as diabetes and obesity.
“We do know that we have people in the younger age groups with significant Type 1 diabetes and may also have individuals with significant obesity,” Birx said at a White House task force news conference on June 26. “We know that those are risk factors, so risk factors go with your comorbidity, not necessarily with your age.”
Asymptomatic
Dr. Fauci noted that young people who are asymptomatic, who never manifest symptoms, can also transmit the virus on to others. He said that young people should “care” not only for their own health but for the “dynamics of the outbreak.”
“If you get infected and spread the infection, even though you do not get sick, you are part of the process of the dynamics of an outbreak in what you might be propagating,” he said. ”[And] inadvertently is infecting someone who then infects someone who then is someone who is vulnerable. That could be your grandmother, your grandfather, your sick uncle, who winds up dying.”
