1. "Younger adults are increasingly testing positive for the coronavirus
In parts of the country, more people in their 20s and 30s are testing positive for the coronavirus. Experts say this is likely due to more testing and less adherence to distancing and mask guidelines."
"As much of the country presses forward with reopening, a growing number of cities and states are finding that the coronavirus outbreak now has a foothold in a younger slice of the population, with people in their 20s and 30s accounting for a larger share of new coronavirus infections.
The demographic shift has emerged in regions with different populations and political approaches to the pandemic – from Washington state and California to Florida and Texas. North Carolina, South Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin and Colorado also all report clusters that have a larger proportion of young adults than they had previously seen.
Public health experts say the trend could be explained in several ways. More people are getting coronavirus tests. The criteria for who gets tested, as well as the capacity to test them, has expanded since the beginning of the pandemic. Early on, generally only people with symptoms or who were seriously ill could get tested at all.
But some public health experts say the increase is because some younger adults may perceive that they are less at risk than their parents or grandparents and are more likely to venture back into society as it reopens — that could mean going to restaurants or social gatherings or returning to the workplace.
What first caught Malmgren's attention was that hospitalizations in Washington were falling, but new cases did not mirror that decrease. Even as more older adults were tested, the rate of infections in younger adults continued to climb.
"The key to controlling this virus so it's not running rampant is to look at the people who are most active and have most contact with the public," she said.
While there is always a risk of becoming seriously ill, the chance of someone under 40 ending up in the hospital is quite low. In fact, the rate of hospitalization for people who test positive for COVID-19 in their 20s is under 4%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For those over 60, the rates go way up, to over 20%. The fatality rate for people in their 20s and 30s without underlying health conditions is about 0.1%.
The story is similar in California. People under 35 now make up about 44% of new infections in that state, compared to 29% last month, according to an analysis of state data by infectious disease epidemiologist George Lemp.
The uptick in new cases is evident in both children and teenagers, as well as adults.
"It's very striking that there's been such a strong shift," said Lemp, the former director of the University of California's HIV/AIDS Research Program. "Some of that could be due to the testing itself and targeting of younger people. And it's also likely due to the shift in behavior as younger people start to move away from social distancing and consistent mask use."
Read in NPR: https://apple.news/AoYhdB9cbQKuuJyN-tE7LWw
2. "Coronavirus Mystery: Are Kids Less Likely To Catch It Than Adults Are?
A new study offers some answers. But many questions remain, including what role children play in transmission."
""What we found was that people under 20 were about half as susceptible to infection as people over 20," Eggo says.
So kids and teens appear far less likely than adults to actually get infected with the virus.
"And then we also found that the probability of showing clinical symptoms ... so getting ill enough that you report the infection... that rose from around 20% in 10- to 19-year-olds, up to around 70% in those over 70," she says.
Eggo's research was published this week in the journal Nature. It uses mathematical models to examine coronavirus data from six countries — China, South Korea, Italy, Japan, Singapore and Canada. The results are similar to an April study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which found that while kids under age 18 make up 22% of the U.S. population, they've accounted for fewer than 2% of reported cases.
The median age in Africa is 20; while in Europe, it's 43.
If younger people are less susceptible to the disease, does that mean countries with younger citizens may have less intense outbreaks?
Megan Culler Freeman, a virologist and pediatrician at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, says kids are major spreaders of many other respiratory diseases.
"The kids are going to day care, they're going to school, especially the younger ones [who] aren't necessarily as polite with their coughs and sneezes," Freeman says. "So it's really easy for those diseases to spread."
Yet that's not what's been reported so far with COVID-19.
Freeman, who studied coronaviruses for her Ph.D,, says children are clearly susceptible to the other known coronaviruses that circulate each year during cold and flu season. Yet something different is happening with this new one.
"We've had a tremendous number of case numbers throughout both the United States and the world. And really a minority of those have been identified in children," she says. "Somewhere between 2 and 5% of all of the [reported] infections are in children under the age of 18, which is kind of amazing."
There are a couple of hypotheses as to why, Freeman says. One is that kids get a milder form of the disease. If they aren't showing symptoms, they may never get tested. And thus those infections aren't counted.
Freeman adds there's also some research showing that the receptors in human cells that the coronavirus latches on to are less developed in younger people.
But both Eggo and Freeman say it's still unclear exactly why children are less at risk to the virus, why so few cases have been detected in kids and whether that trend will continue.
Read in NPR: https://apple.news/AndEclP_0QAKE_Hkh4q2BWw