Young Brazilians are dying of guilt in an alarming change

Photographer: Dado Galdieri / Bloomberg

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Staggering under his The worst period of the pandemic, with daily records of cases and deaths, Brazil faces a frightening development: an increasing number of deaths among young people.

So far this month, according to the government data, about 2,030 Brazilians aged 30 to 39 died from Covid, more than double the number recorded in January. Among those in their 40s, there were 4,150 deaths in March, compared to 1,823 in January, and for those between 20 and 29, deaths jumped from 242 to 505.

“Before, the risk factor for dying at Covid-19 was being older, having some comorbidity,” said Domingos Alves, a professor of medicine who is part of the national monitoring group. “Now, the risk is to be Brazilian.”

Fiocruz, a non-profit health organization, issued a report on Friday showing the same trend with slightly different numbers.

Said cases among those aged 30 to 59 had risen from the beginning of the year to mid-March, at a rate almost double the national average of 316%. These age groups have seen deaths increase by at least 317%, compared to 223% in Brazil as a whole.

In São Paulo, the richest and most populous state in the country, the increase is especially noticeable in private hospitals, said State Secretary for Health, Jean Gorinchteyn, in an interview. People aged 60 and over continue to dominate hospital admissions, but the proportion of people under 50 has increased from 10% to 15% last year.

In the state capital, more and more people between the ages of 20 and 54 are becoming infected, said city health secretary Edson Aparecido, told TV GloboNews on Friday. Younger patients wait longer to seek medical attention and become sicker when they arrive.

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The explanation for the rising rate of infection among young people – in a country that is largely young – remains unclear, although authorities and medical experts suggest several possibilities. First, throughout 2020, local and regional restrictions made socialization difficult. That changed with the holidays, the new year and the slackening of the locks.

Second, a variant first detected in the Amazon city of Manaus is probably partly to blame, according to Jaques Sztajnbok, who helps to manage the ICU at Emílio Ribas hospital, one of the main centers of infectious diseases in Brazil. To a large extent, patients fall ill with this variant or with that of the United Kingdom, which is also more contagious. A study carried out in São Paulo found one of the two variants in 71% of the cases.

Third, vaccines are limited in Brazil and there is no time limit for inoculating young people.

Fernando Brum, director of the Santa Casa de Sorocaba hospital, said that the mutation of the virus in a much more contagious version with a viral load that makes people sick more quickly and aggressively has made young people go from cases mostly asymptomatic to be seriously affected.

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Brum, whose hospital is a two-hour drive from São Paulo, says the ICUs are also full at the age of 30. He estimates that the age of patients hospitalized with Covid-19 has decreased by 50% compared to 2020.

“The intensive care unit is constantly and continuously occupied,” he said. Patients in their 30s make up at least half of these beds, and the average length of stay in the hospital has tripled compared to last year. He recently fell for a dark reason – patients are dying more quickly.

Sztajnbok said it is not uncommon now to see people under 40 or even in their 20s without any risk factors that require intubation and life support. Before, he said, most patients were over 65 years old. “The first time this happened, we were shocked,” he said. “We were also shocked the second time. Now we are no longer. “

The longer the hospital stay putting pressure on the health system in Brazil, struggling after decades of little investment. The ICU stocking rates were equal to or greater than 80% in 25 states, according to the new report by Fiocruz, while 17 states had levels greater than 90%.

In a March 23 report, Fiocruz also highlighted a “disproportionate increase in mortality in the country”, which went from 2% to 3.1% at the end of last year. The jump signals that patients may be dying from lack of assistance or from failures in health care, he said.