More young people getting sick with COVID-19 in Brazil

Doctors have noticed a worrying trend, with a growing number of young people getting seriously ill and dying from COVID in the latest wave.

Since the new year, doctors in Brazil have noted a worrying new trend.

During the South American country’s surge of COVID-19 cases when the pandemic first struck, as in most countries around the world it was mostly elderly people getting sick and dying from the virus.

But since the start of 2021, when the nation began its descent into its worst days of the pandemic so far, a growing number of young people appear to be getting severely ill and dying from the disease, doctors have told CNN.

One of the hardest-hit countries globally — second only to the United States in its death toll and number of infections — more than 12 million residents have contracted the virus while close to 300,700 have died.

“The acceleration of the epidemic in various states is leading to the collapse of their public and private hospital systems, which may soon become the case in every region of Brazil,” the National Council of Health Secretaries (CONASS) warned earlier this month.

“Sadly, the anaemic rollout of vaccines and the slow pace of which they’re becoming available still does not suggest that this scenario will be reversed in the short term.”

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More than 12 million residents have contracted the virus while close to 300,700 have died in Brazil, which is now facing its worst days of the pandemic so far. Picture: Buda Mendes/Getty Images

‘We have otherwise healthy patients that are between 30 and 50 years old and that is the profile for the majority of patients,’ one ICU doctor said. Picture: Buda Mendes/Getty Images

In this latest wave of infections and deaths, intensive care doctors have said the patients are younger than ever.

“We have otherwise healthy patients that are between 30- and 50-years-old and that is the profile for the majority of patients,” Rio de Janeiro intensive care physician, Dr Pedro Archer, told CNN.

“That is the big differentiator in this latest wave.”

ICU doctor Luan Matos de Menezes echoed the sentiment back in January, telling the network that “the numbers of serious infections are much higher than in the first wave” for young people that “you can tell their conditions are much more critical”.

National statistics published by Brazil’s Health Ministry on the ages of COVID-19 victims found the number of people aged 30 to 59 represented about 27 per cent of deaths over the past three months — a seven per cent increase from statistics before December.

State health officials also said that 60 per cent of younger patients with the virus needed ICU beds, a higher figure than earlier in the pandemic.

New variants, one epidemiologist said, could be playing a role as well.

The new variant, known as P. 1, is 1.4 to 2.2 times more contagious than versions of the virus previously found in Brazil, and 25 per cent to 61 per cent more capable of reinfecting people who had been infected by an earlier strain, according to a study released in February.

“It’s possible that these new variants are more lethal but we don’t have scientific data to confirm that,” Jesem Orellana, a Brazilian epidemiologist, told CNN.

“But what we do know is that the P1 variant is more transmissible and that plays a big part in this second wave.”

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Aerial view of a burial at the Vila Formosa cemetery during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on March 23. Picture: Miguel Schincariol/AFP

Younger people taking part in illegal gatherings while the mutant strain circulates has also contributed to the current situation.

“You have a much more transmissible virus going around,” Brazilian microbiologist Natalia Pasternak told the network.

“It’s going to infect more people, including more young people. (The surge) may just be an epidemiological effect of having so many more people infected at the same time.”

As intensive care doctor Rosa Lopez told The Wall Street Journal, “the virus is behaving differently”.

“It’s really aggressive … the situation is very difficult, really terrible.”