ICU full of young people

[Sleeplessinsaltend]

I keep hearing from people on here that ICU is full of young people, if we unlock then the wards will be full of 30/40 year olds. Looking at this it seems not to be the case.

I have a mate who is morbidly obese. She was offered a vaccine last week. She’s in her 30s

It isn't in the hospital I work at. NW England.

50% ICU capacity and they are between 56 and 97 years old. Not all covid.

We certainly aren't overrun. I'd say the pressure is coming from staff having to isolate because of positive testing rather than increased patient numbers.

It would be really useful to know what percentage of working age people in ITU are also morbidly obese. I know the "underlying health conditions" statement has been questioned because (it's claimed) it can include pretty irrelevant things like migraines (id appreciate it is someone who has knowledge about it could give me accurate info!). But if, say, 80% of people under 70 in ITU were morbidly obese, then that could inform our choices of how to handle moving forward.
And this is definitely NOT fat-shaming, before I get jumped of for that. Nor do I claim my example of 80% is based in actual evidence. It's just an example.

@MaskellEtt

They have moved on to offering vaccines to all age groups of people who have co-morbidities as well as those aged 65+. So that figures, your friend having been offered a vaccine, as morbid obesity is a co-morbidity.

Does anyone here know how to find the admissions by age groups to ICU without known underlying conditions?
There must be a way of calculating the future potential admissions to ICU and hospitalisations if there is access to all the data ....
Remove all the vaccinated 1-9 priority groups including the clinically extremely vulnerable and vulnerable 16-49 years, 50 plus and the newly added ‘shielding’ group that should have their first dose by the end of March. Therefore, a decent amount of protection by the third week in April.
Take (at worse case) around 25% off these that may not take up the offer of a vaccination due to choice or condition.
What % of the population is left in year groups 16-49 without any known underlying condition that would be ill enough to be admitted to ICU?
Will this figure then become the ‘acceptable’ and manageable level of Covid that we need to accept going forward? Obviously, as time goes on there will be even more younger age groups vaccinated and hopefully booster shots allowing for current and future variants in the future. However, will there be capacity for the 25% (estimate) who are not vaccinated due to choice or condition or does ‘herd immunity’ kick in at that point and actual transmission rate become really low?

[quote Baileysforchristmas]@MaskellEtt 140kg 😮 wow i’m 60kg, so people over weight are at a very high risk of ending up in hospital whatever their age.[/quote]
Yes, it seems to be that obesity is not counted as part of "no underlying conditions" when in fact it seems to be one of the greatest risk factor in outcomes for covid.

"whereas there don't seem to be statistics on ICU admissions."

There are - in the regular ICNARC reports. Here is a summary of the latest one:
mobile.twitter.com/AdeleGroyer/status/1363086992679047169

Full report is here: t.co/TcwvynucpS?amp=1

@Sleeplessinsaltend

Sweetcharities I get my info from the ONS, I’m just sharing it to counter some of the information I have seen shared here.

But as previous posters have already pointed out, those are the rates per 100,000 population. They also relate to all hospital admissions not ICU, so the misinformation is coming from you.

@InterfectoremVulpes morbid obesity / obesity should be. It would be on their medical records if the GP is aware. Also a large number of people (not all)who are morbidly obese will have other health conditions such as diabetes, hypertension etc.

@YoshimisMum

Does anyone here know how to find the admissions by age groups to ICU without known underlying conditions? There must be a way of calculating the future potential admissions to ICU and hospitalisations if there is access to all the data .... Remove all the vaccinated 1-9 priority groups including the clinically extremely vulnerable and vulnerable 16-49 years, 50 plus and the newly added ‘shielding’ group that should have their first dose by the end of March. Therefore, a decent amount of protection by the third week in April. Take (at worse case) around 25% off these that may not take up the offer of a vaccination due to choice or condition. What % of the population is left in year groups 16-49 without any known underlying condition that would be ill enough to be admitted to ICU? Will this figure then become the ‘acceptable’ and manageable level of Covid that we need to accept going forward? Obviously, as time goes on there will be even more younger age groups vaccinated and hopefully booster shots allowing for current and future variants in the future. However, will there be capacity for the 25% (estimate) who are not vaccinated due to choice or condition or does ‘herd immunity’ kick in at that point and actual transmission rate become really low?

It’s predicted daily with a clear trajectory for each region. The information is not in the public domain.

[quote buttheywereonlysatilites]@InterfectoremVulpes morbid obesity / obesity should be. It would be on their medical records if the GP is aware. Also a large number of people (not all)who are morbidly obese will have other health conditions such as diabetes, hypertension etc. [/quote]
I'm talking more about the image that the media are presenting to the public rather than clinical reality. As mentioned on the previous page the BBC ran a story about how 30 year olds were being admitted to ICU and how shocking it was. However the patient featured in the story was quite clearly morbidly obese and that wasn't seen as being any kind of explanation for why he might have ended up in ICU (also, for the record this chap was in ICU but not on a ventilator so the 2 don't necessarily go hand in hand either)

There was as an article in the news recently where a journalist visited a large ICU and documented that every single person on a ventilator was morbidly obese. Could have been a one off but pretty eye opening I hope the new shielding list covers obesity I haven’t checked?

I mentioned this on another thread as someone was claiming all the ICUs are full of young, healthy people at the moment. If the majority are obese then they are not healthy and that is a condition that puts you at a much higher risk of serious illness with this virus.

I think the response I got was that I was implying they didn’t matter as they were obese.

Not my point at all. It’s hard to get the official stats as obesity hasn’t been considered a serious underlying condition so patients will be described as ‘fit and healthy’.

It’s good that they are finally recognising the risk factor of obesity and bumping people over a certain BMI up the vaccination list. This should take the pressure off ICUs. I think the government know this.

I’m specifically addressing a mumsnet myth that the hospitals, and ICU, are full of people in their 20/30/40’s. We see it in every thread here

I know what you're addressing, OP, and you're correct. It reminds me of the panic over "the matron" who shot her mouth off about her hospital being full of small children - a claim instantly dismissed and so ridiculous that even the media pulled it within hours

Of course, now you've worked hard to bust that myth, it's instantly replaced by something that might happen if we don't all do such-and-such, and those who insist they know someone down the pub senior medics who maintain the doommongering's all true

And all this over a virus which most will barely even know they've got

Also remember 40% people caught covid in hospital so many of the icu patients who have covid may be in icu for other reasons yet have tested positive

@Pastanred I don't think anyone has proved that 40% figure is accurate have they ?

@RedcurrantPuff

Therefore if the overall numbers catching covid double, or triple, across the population, and nothing else changes, we could get ICU occupancy higher than current levels despite the fact the older groups have been now been vaccinated.

But why would numbers double or triple in an increasingly vaccinated population, especially as we now know it is likely that the vaccines reduce transmission?

The thing currently keeping rates low in age group 18-69 is lockdown, not vaccination.

Therefore rates will rise if you unlock. If rates rise, numbers in ICU from unvaccinated group will rise.

I don't think a higher percentage of 30/40s would get ill, I think the same percentage of a larger number would get ill if we unlock rapidly.

ICU probably is full of young people because they’re they only group likely to benefit from that level of treatment. The older generations are probably having ward based care on the covid wards with standard oxygen and deemed not suitable candidates for ICU because they’ll never manage to extubate them again.

Average (median) age of ICU covid19 patients has been fairly consistent throughout the pandemic at around 60 (so nationally, half the patients under 60 and half over). Source: ICNARC. Or in other words the majority of ICU patients are from the working age population (65 and under).

Obviously this will vary from hospital to hospital depending on the age distribution of cases in the population and the overall age of the population in that area.

As @QueenOfPain rightly pointed out, older patients are much less likely to be admitted to ICU and indeed very few patients in ICU are over 80.

About 37 percent (135,000 of the 365,000) of total covid hospital admissions since the start of the pandemic have been aged younger than 64. Not sure how this translates to icu admissions.

It's not full of young people

I know that for a fact

Define young @Remmy123 ? Under 30 , 50 or 70 ? To me most of those people would be 'young' in a healthcare setting. So what do you class as 'young' , under 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 or 70 ?

Sky news reported that a 16 and 13 year old have died this week, no known underlying condition. This has worried me.

I found this chart for The Netherlands, 32% of ICU admissions are below the age of 60 and 51% of hospital admissions.

"Not sure how this translates to icu admissions."

See attached (from ICNARC report linked to in previous post).