Coronavirus: the typical profile of the intensive care patient is getting younger and younger

For several weeks, the profile of patients entering intensive care has not been the same. The proportion of people over 70 in intensive care is decreasing and the 15-60 age group is increasingly populating the intensive care units.

The incidence rate for 20-50 year olds is above 800/100000 in 93 and 700 in IdF. Resuscitators report more and more cases of young patients without co-morbidity entering shifts. The Covid is not just the story of the most fragile or the oldest, it is the story of all of us.

– Aurélien Rousseau (@aur_rousseau) March 23, 2021

The coronavirus epidemic is taking a whole different turn. Intensive care in hospitals is populated by a much younger segment of the population without comorbidities. During the first wave, 60-70 year olds occupied the intensive care beds. Now, the profile of patients has evolved but rejuvenated. This consequence is not only the effect of the vaccination of the oldest people, the number of patients aged 80 and over, already small, is not increasing. However, the other age categories are soaring: the number of patients aged 70 to 79 has soared by 50% since January. Regarding the 50-69 age group, the number of patients has doubled over the same period and among 30-49 year olds, the number has tripled, as reported The Dauphiné Libéré.

.@ LacombeKarine1 : “The people who arrive in intensive care are younger, there are a lot of women. And these people stay in intensive care for a long time, those who do have a lot of after-effects.” # le79Inter pic.twitter.com/Eztb0f73cz

– France Inter (@franceinter) March 19, 2021

Invited by France Inter, infectious disease specialist Karine Lacombe drew up an alarming report on the change in the face of the epidemic. “ They are no longer, as we said, elderly people who arrive at the hospital, who would have died anyway in the next few months or next year.“, worried the head of the infectious diseases department at the Saint-Antoine hospital, in Paris. But the concern also relates to the lengthening, indisputable, of the durations of intensive care. The average of 12 days at the end of 2020 s ‘now amounts to 15 days. A significant difference of 20% more, which does not facilitate the nursing staff of hospitals. ” to keep busy “ a longer bed means less space for those who arrive. To overcome these complications, some regions rely on medical evacuations. But the health authorities are encountering great difficulties. Only 10% of patients would be “Transportable” from saturated regions. In addition, many families are opposed to the evacuation …
Other factors condition this saturation of intensive care services such as the fact that many patients arrive to be accommodated directly in intensive care without going through a hospital bed. “conventional”.

This new change is mainly linked to the active circulation of the British variant which is said to be more dangerous and more contagious than the original strain. This mutation leads to more complications. Studies are currently being carried out to understand the evolution of the typical profiles of patients in intensive care.