A sobering breakdown of severe COVID-19 cases shows young adults can’t dismiss it

Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - 16:40 in Health & Medicine

Although older adults face the highest risk of being hospitalized with or dying from COVID-19, younger adults can also end up in the hospital (SN: 3/19/20). If they do, the outcome can be serious, and a new study is providing a look at just how severe the disease can be for those patients. Of roughly 3,200 people ages 18 to 34 who were admitted to 419 U.S. hospitals from early April to the end of June, 21 percent, or 684 people, landed in intensive care and 10 percent, or 331 patients, ended up on ventilators. Almost 3 percent, or nearly 90 people, died, researchers report September 9 in JAMA Internal Medicine.  Those numbers are “alarming figures given that COVID-19 outbreaks are rampant in many U.S. colleges that have opened for in-person learning,” says Aubree Gordon, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Younger adults now make up nearly a...

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