Rise in young women being admitted to hospital

[Char2015]

Reported by Sky News:

An expert has said more women aged 20 to 40 are being admitted to hospital with COVID-19.

Professor Calum Semple, professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool, said the rise could be attributed to work and caring responsibilities.

"It does really show that this is not just a problem of the frail elderly, this is a problem that can affect people between 20 and 40 just as well," he told BBC Breakfast.

"These people will be working in hospitality. Also in caring roles, some will be parents of school children. It's mainly to do with their public sector and public facing roles."

The increase in cases happened too soon for it to be school related. It is increasing the risk but it doesn’t seem to be the primary factor, like a few seem to think.

@pooiepooie25 but the stats I was quoting were death rates via the ONS, not test rates. The totals were under 100 all round so it's not really possible to do a deep analysis of different factors - but they do strongly suggest as a group teachers going into a school at the peak of infection pre lockdown, with zero social distancing, had broadly the same risk of dying of covid as groups like corporate managers (maybe working in an office, maybe already home).

Hairdressers, hospitality workers, manual labourers, security guards, on the other hand, all sadly had far higher rates, and many sectors employing groups like these have been opening up since July, which is much more likely to be the cause of the surge.

Of course, now we know more it is absolutely important that we DO implement social distancing as much as possible in schools, but hopefully as a teacher it should give you some confidence in returning to school that the evidence so far suggests your risk is much lower than some of the more partisan voices on here suggest.

The Sage member who said this can’t be linked to schools is the same man who said children absolutely don’t transmit this virus.

Of course he’s going to say it’s not linked to schools. He can’t go against his own dangerous advice.

I think it’s linked to schools and all the customer facing jobs mentioned. It can be both.

@Jrobhatch29

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.20196428v1

This study from Scotland (pre print, yes I know) actually found that living with young children reduced risk of testing positive and of hospitalisation

Is this from before schools opened? When families may have been more likely to work from home because of kids being home and less likely to mix. When there was still distancing in schools?

Few schools had infections back then too.

1700 do now

@Southernsoftie76

So now the panic sets in because it may affect ‘us’ and not just others, others being the vulnerable, the overweight, those who have underlying conditions or who are BAME, all of whom have been seen as expendable by a few on here with their demands for life to go back to normal.

Exactly.

Panic, followed by or mixed in with some fresh denial. I suppose denial is a standard coping mechanism, so I shouldn't judge - but it is hard to see so much of it on MN, along with the heinous attitudes to 'the expendables'.

Why does it matter if the women are obese or not? 29% of British adults are obese so that’s still a hell of a lot of at risk people.

Why does it matter if the women are obese or not?

Othering

It’s a kind of protective magical thinking that means the serious form of the disease only happens to other people. people who are not like me. So when hospital admission rise for young women, some other explanation must be sought, rather than fully grasping the idea that yes it could be you

I think it's useful to know your own personal risk. Otherwise, for example, you have young healthy adults taking up food delivery slots (and disinfecting their shopping) and elderly and vulnerable people unable to access them. We need to know who is at higher risk to prioritise services.

There is a very good risk calculator for Covid here:
alama.org.uk/covid-19-medical-risk-assessment/
It calculates a Covid age (and hence shows age related risk) based on lots of contributing factors. Some underlying conditions that were flagged earlier make only a small difference. Even Obesity is only a big factor when BMI >35.

That risk calculator is about fitness for work when people have occupational exposure. So it's about shielding & furlough or even community exposure, really.

"Its purpose is to assist health professionals in the UK who are asked to advise about patients’ medical fitness for work that may entail exposure to coronavirus."

from my very limited understanding obesity comes into play as internal fat may cause problems for the lungs?

I don't think we are talking a size 14 here, nobody should be villified for having a bloody cheese sandwich for Gods sake.

My totally healthy 14 yr old son who is slim with no underlying health conditions was 12hrs off being hospitalised with Covid in May. I’ve never seen him so ill in my life.

And weirdly, I’m 49 and obese but it barely touched me (though I had a dry infrequent cough for 4 months afterwards).

Hmm, I just googled that Calum Semple and found this- in the press saying about how it 'has a death rate similar to Ebola' www.newstatesman.com/2020/04/third-people-hospitalised-covid-19-uk-have-died-study-finds

Again a scaremongering article, as applied at the time to the more severe cases. Not sure I would trust this article in the OP which has little detail and similarly dramatic.

"Few schools had infections back then too.

1700 do now"

Rubbish. You seriously think few schools had infections back in march when it was rife? If we have 1700 schools effected now when we have far, far fewer daily infections there is no way schools didn't have cases when were estimated to have 100,000 cases a day in early March. There was no testing so no way of knowing. There was also some outbreaks when schools were open with social distancing and key workers so it is ridiculous to think schools were unaffected when we had huge numbers of cases and absolutely no measures in place.

Also in contrast it states

"The study showed that both obesity and age raised the risk of death, and that men are more likely to have a severe form of the disease than women are. The gap between outcomes for men and women gets wider with age, the research found."

I think she was asking because obesity has been discussed as being a high risk factor. I'm a 35 year old woman and I am overweight so I definitely worry about catching the virus. I have been trying to be alot more healthier and I'm sure it has spurred a lot of people on to do the same.

@AllWashedOut

The 20-40 category is where we have seen the rise in cases ergo some proportion of those will get seriously ill. Young, fit and healthy can die from covid as they can from the flu. It is extremely rare though.

This is a good point

Agree with Orange always worth checking scientist’s background and agenda.

Overall a better breakdown of information is needed

Is it because women are in more lower paid work?
It would be really interesting to see how many of those hospitalised women are teachers or school support staff?

I'm not sure teachers (while I would expect to be at higher risk due to no SD or PPE) would be classed as low paid though, compared to retail, care-workers, hospitality, warehouse work etc

Hooray! At last the penny has dropped. Perhaps now younger generations will take notice of the need for social distancing.

But care workers are able to use PPE and can social distance when not performing intimate care- teachers don't have any of this this protection!

There have been reports of young, 'thin healthy' people, no underlying health conditions getting Covid 19.
What about the 21 yr old girl that left hospital in a wheelchair after being there for several weeks.

She'd ran and felt unwell and sick, on the phone they thought it was a kidney infection that night she was admitted to hospital and tested negative, they decided to transfer her to another hospital and then she tested positive and by the time she arrived her body could not take in enough oxygen through the nose tube and the covid 19 was attacking her organs. The last thing she remembers was being surround by 8-10 doctors before she was sedated.
There have been stories of young people in the UK and all over Europe but not on the front pages, I expect to stop young people getting overwhelmed and they kept on pushing the news as if it was the elderly that were catching it. There are young people having respiratory physio to help them breath weeks after leaving hospital and they think it can take up to 6 months to a year for lungs to repair from the damaged caused.
I think perhaps people are not reading or looking for the news otherwise we would not have seen the blatant behaviour of those that do not think they can catch Covid 19.
We are all responsible - I would not like to catch, give or carry this to anyone that I know or even a total stranger! We have to look after ourselves and look after each other.

Covid 19 is worse than Ebola as people cannot tell when they have it or are just carrying it. Also seen from the Chinese guy that had one strain, recovered, travelled to Europe via Spain and ended up being test positive on his arrival into China but with another strain.

Very small proportion of the population. Again. People need to stop talking in absolute numbers.