Younger Brazilians die of Covid in a new alarming change

Photographer: Dado Galdieri / Bloomberg

We are following the news about the coronavirus outbreak and the global response. Sign up here for our daily newsletter on what you need to know.

Stepping under his The worst period of the pandemic, with daily records of cases and deaths, Brazil is facing a daunting development: a growing number of deaths among young people.

So far this month, according to the government data, about 2,030 Brazilians aged 30 to 39 have died for Covid, more than double the number recorded in January. Among those in their forties, there were 4,150 fatalities in March, up from 1,823 in January, and between the ages of 20 and 29, deaths have risen from 502 to 245.

“Before, the risk factor for dying from Covid-19 was to be older, with some comorbidity,” said Domingos Alves, a medical professor who is part of the national surveillance group. “Now, the risk is to be Brazilian.”

Fiocruz, a non-profit health organization, issued a document Friday report showing the same trend with slightly different figures.

There were called cases between these aged Between 30 and 59 they had increased from the beginning of the year to mid-March at a rate almost double the national average of 316%. These age groups saw deaths jump at least 317%, compared to 223% in Brazil as a whole.

In Sao Paulo, the country’s richest and most populous state, the increase is especially noticeable in private hospitals, Secretary of State for Health Jean Gorinchteyn said in an interview. Those over 60 continue to dominate hospital admissions, but the proportion of those under 50 has risen to 15% from 10% last year.

In the state capital, more and more people between the ages of 20 and 54 are infected, the city’s health secretary, Edson Aparecido, he told GloboNews TV on Friday. Younger patients wait longer to seek medical attention and are sicker when they arrive.

The worst coveted crisis in the world is taking place in Brazil, where nothing works

The explanation for the rising infection rate among young people, in a largely young country, is still unclear, although medical officials and experts suggest several possibilities. First, throughout 2020, local and regional restrictions made socialization difficult. That changed with the holidays, the new year and the slackening blockages.

Second, a variant first detected in the Amazon city of According to Jaques Sztajnbok, who helps run the ICU at the Emílio Ribas Hospital, one of Brazil’s leading facilities for infectious diseases, Manaus is probably to blame. Patients are almost sick with this variant or that of the UK, which is also more contagious. A study conducted in Sao Paulo found one of the two variants in 71% of cases.

Third, vaccines are limited in Brazil and there is no timeline for inoculating young people.

Fernando Brum, director of the Santa Casa de Sorocaba hospital, said that the mutation of the virus in a much more contagious version with a viral load that makes people get sick more quickly and aggressively has made young people have gone from mostly asymptomatic cases to being severely affected.

Why mutated coronavirus variants are so worrisome: QuickTake

Brum, whose hospital is a two-hour drive from Sao Paulo, says the ICUs are also full of 30-year-olds. He estimates that the age of patients hospitalized with Covid-19 has decreased by 50% compared to 2020.

“The intensive care unit is busy constantly and uninterrupted,” he said. Patients in their thirties account for at least half of these beds and the average time spent in hospital has tripled compared to last year. He has recently fallen for a serious reason: patients die faster.

Sztajnbok said it is now not uncommon to see people under the age of 40 or even twenty without risk factors requiring intubation and life support. Before, he said, patients were mostly 65 years old. “The first time it happened, it surprised us,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then. We are not now ”.

The longest hospital stays are putting pressure on the Brazilian healthcare system, fighting after decades of low investment. ICU capacity rates were above or equal to 80% in 25 states, according to the new Fiocruz report, while 17 states had levels above 90%.

In a March 23 report, Fiocruz also highlighted a “disproportionate increase in mortality in the country,” which rose to 3.1% from 2% at the end of last year. The jumps indicate patients could die from lack of care or health care failures, he said.