Coronavirus: Infection of under 50s shadows surge in deaths in Italy

New statistics from Italy show Millennials, Gen X and medical workers also face a significant risk of being hospitalised.

Members of the Italian Red Cross assist homeless people sleeping on the street in the historic city centre in Rome, Italy. Picture: Getty Images

New statistics from Italy, the ­centre of the coronavirus pandemic in Europe, have shown that while it is overwhelming very old people who are dying of the disease, Millennials, Gen X and medical workers also face a significant risk of being hospitalised.

On Wednesday, Italian authorities announced that the number of deaths from the virus was nearly 3000, after 475 people died in one day. There are now 35,713 infections in the country.

The Italian experience is 12 per cent of people who have contracted coronavirus will require intensive care, although it is unclear if all require ventilators.

Australia is looking to statistics from Italy to understand how the coronavirus may play out and the news is sobering.

In a study of data from COVID-19 Task Force of the Department of Infectious Diseases and the IT Service Instituto Superiore di Sanita, scientists Edward Livingston and Karen Bucher found young and middle-aged adults should not be complacent.

The study found that at the beginning of this week, there were 22,512 Italians infected with corona­virus, of which 24 per cent were aged between 19 to 50.

Those aged 51 to 70 represented 37.3 per cent of cases and those over 70 represented 37.6 per cent.

Even allowing for Italy’s ageing population — not unlike Australia’s — the perception that the corona­virus mainly infects older people is not borne out by the figures, although the risk of dying from it skyrockets in the over 80s.

In Italy, those who are infected and in their 70s have a 12.5 per cent chance of dying; those in 80s have nearly a 20 per cent death rate; and over 90s it is 22.7 per cent.

There have been no deaths in people under 30.

The study also showed that there were more than 2000 infected health workers, many of them aged under 50, comprising about 9 per cent of total infections.

Italy’s national federations of doctors and nurses said it believed 2300 medical personnel have been infected, 1900 of them doctors and nurses, and blamed a shortage of protective masks and clothing.

The study also found seriously ill patients are also more likely to be male, at a ratio of 60:40.

Five per cent of patients are classified critical, 25 per cent severe, 46 per cent have mild symptoms, 6.7 per cent have none and another 6.7 per cent have few.

Nearly 11 per cent have unspecified symptoms.

The Italian crisis began on February 20 when a 38-year-old with no travel history to China arrived in a Lombardy hospital in respiratory distress. Within 24 hours, another 36 cases were hospitalised but none of them had had contact with the first patient.

A separate scientific study conducted by three Italian doctors in the Lombardy region, Giacomo Grasselli, Antonio Pesenti and Maurizio Cecconi, showed that at the time, the region had intensive care capacity of 720 beds and within 18 days had created another 482 beds by cancelling non-urgent procedures, yet they were still quickly overwhelmed.

They said other countries needed to learn from their efforts and that only an intensive care unit network can provide the ­initial immediate surge response.

“Healthcare systems not organised in collaborative emergency networks should work towards one now,’’ they said. “Despite prompt response of the local and regional ICU network, health authorities and the government to try to contain the initial cluster, the surge in patients requiring ICU admission has been overwhelming.”

They said the proportion of ICU admissions at 12 per cent of the total positive cases was ­higher than in China, where the figure had been only 5 per cent.

This Italian data is believed to be behind the U-turn in advice by the Imperial College London to the British government, which had modelled the need for intensive care on a rate of 5 per cent. Britain this week ordered the ­effective closure of pubs and restaurants.

Scientists from the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases believe the coronavirus is still able to infect people for as long as three hours after someone sneezes. They found the virus could be detected on plastic and stainless steel after three days, but on cardboard it was not viable after 24 hours. The virus lives the shortest amount of time on copper, when it took just four hours for the virus to become inactive, they said.