Coronavirus: 1 in 3 young people are likely to develop a serious form of the disease

Knowledge related to Covid-19 is becoming more refined. According to a recent study published in the Journal of Adolescent Healthone in three young people aged 18 to 25 is likely to develop a serious form of the disease, contrary to what was announced at the start of the pandemic.

Researchers from the University of California, in the United States, studied the reaction of 8400 people infected with the virus. Based on this sample, they concluded that 33% of men and 30% of women were more vulnerable to the new coronavirus overall and therefore more likely to be hospitalized with a severe form of the disease.

Vaping, one of the risk factors among young people

Unsurprisingly, those over 65 are more at risk, but the gap between young people and young people seems to be narrowing in recent weeks, a recent 299% increase in hospitalizations among young people (compared to 139% among seniors ) having been observed. According to the researchers, in mid-April there were 8.7 hospitalizations per 100,000 people in the 18 to 29 age group, compared to 128.3 per 100,000 people over 65. At the end of June, these figures were 34.7 and 306.7 respectively.

How to explain this increase? Several factors increase this risk in young people such as diabetes, asthma, heart, immune system, liver disorders, obesity or even smoking, including vaping. “Recent evidence indicates that smoking is associated with a higher likelihood of progression of Covid-19, including development of severe disease, admission to intensive care or death,” confirmed Sally Adams, lead author of the study.

The impact of smoking is such that “the risk of being vulnerable to a serious disease is reduced by half when smokers are removed from the sample”, specifies his colleague Charles Irwin Jr, who recalls in passing that no scientific data never suggested that smoking reduces the risk of being infected with Covid-19, although this has recently been addressed.

The mutation of the virus in question?

At the beginning of July, other American researchers discovered that the variant of SARS-CoV-2, which is currently circulating in Europe and the United States (named D614G) would be more dangerous than the strain that appeared in China. It would be three to six times more likely to infect human cells. “It seems likely that it is a more apt virus,” commented Erica Ollmann Saphire, one of the researchers. Could this mutation of the virus be the cause of the recent increase in serious cases among young people? No scientific data attests to this for the moment, but it could be a lead.

Worldwide, 13,287,651 cases have been confirmed and 577,954 deaths, including 30,029 in France.