For months, public health officials have said that young adults have been largely responsible for the spread of COVID-19 in the United States. But new research suggests that there is another age group that may be fueling new cases of the virus: 35-49 year olds.
This is the conclusion of a recently launched study from Imperial College London, UK. The study, which was published in the journal Science, analyzed cell phone mobility data for more than 10 million Americans between the beginning of February and the end of October 2020. Among other things, the data helped researchers determine where people were going, such as restaurants and grocery stores. The researchers then compared this data to cases of COVID-19 and death rates by age.
The researchers concluded in the study that “most infections by COVID-19” originate in people between 20 and 49 years old, but people between 35 and 49 years old are responsible for 41.1 percent of new cases of the virus. Those in their thirties and forties, responsible for the spread of the virus, are consistent across the country, the researchers said in the study, but the “estimated contributions” of people aged 20 to 34 were greater in the southern regions. , Southwest and Western United States. States.
“This study provides evidence that the resurgent COVID-19 epidemics in the U.S. in 2020 were driven by adults aged 20-49, and in particular adults aged 35-49, before and after school reopened,” wrote The researchers. “These adults represented, after the school reopened in October 2020, about 72.2 percent of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the USA”
The results coincide with the research shared by the CDC in September. This study analyzed data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia and found that 20% of COVID-19 cases between March and August 2020 in the United States occurred in people aged 20 to 29 – the highest percentage of all age groups. age groups. The report also found that there was a drop in the median age of people infected with COVID-19 from 46 in May to 38 in August because of this.
So, what’s going on here? The most recent data suggest that “due to work, school and activities in general, the average age generally moves a lot compared to the elderly or very young,” study co-author Dr. Samir Bhatt, associate professor of geostatistics in the Department of Infectious Diseases Epidemiology at Imperial College London, told Yahoo Life. This, he says, increases the risk of infection – and the transmission of the virus to others. But, adds Bhatt, it is “difficult to separate” exactly what is happening “apart from the fact that they generally move more”.
Middle-aged people may also have more contacts than those who are younger and older, co-author Oliver Ratmann, professor of statistics at Imperial College London, told Yahoo Life. And, he adds, these contacts may include people who are “highly susceptible to COVID-19 infection”.
Still, says Bhatt, “the exact reason is speculation at this point – our work just looks at the sign on mobility, not the factors that drive that mobility.”
Infectious disease specialist Dr. Amesh A. Adalja, a senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety, told Yahoo Life that the data is not shocking. “We have seen for some time that groups of young people aged 20 to 49 are driving dissemination,” he says. Although Adalja says that “it is not completely clear what is happening”, he has some theories. More contacts than younger or older groups is one.
“It could be that they are working more outside the home and interacting with people than at other ages,” he says. And given that this age group usually has a lower risk of serious complications with COVID-19, they “may be more risk-tolerant” and looser in preventing the spread of the virus, says Adalja.
Ratmann says his findings suggest that “non-pharmaceutical interventions”, such as wearing a mask and clear guidelines on preventing the spread of the virus, are “very important” in controlling the spread of COVID-19. “Even with strong interventions and guidelines, parts of the population will still need to move for a variety of reasons,” he says. “Therefore, even while the vulnerable are being vaccinated, measures need to remain in place to control those parts of the population that still spread the infection widely.”
Adalja says the study and other data raise the possibility that vaccinating middle-aged people earlier could help control the spread of the virus. “It is clear from these data where the direction of public health should be,” he says. “There may be a theoretical advantage in vaccinating the group of individuals to decrease the spread.”
To latest coronavirus news and updates, go together on https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus. According to experts, people over 60 and immunocompromised remain the most at risk. If you have questions, consult the CDC’s and Who is it resource guides.
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Originally published