Who’s Contracting and Who’s Dying

I thought you might be interested in the remarks of Illinois Gov. Pritzker’s chief medical advisor regarding who is contracting COVID-19 and who is dying of it. From NBC Chicago:

Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said Tuesday that in analyzing the data every day and over time, the largest number of coronavirus cases in the state are in the age group of 20 to 29 years old.

“We look at the numbers daily, weekly, monthly, wave one to wave two, right now we see that the largest number of cases, if you divide them up by groups, the largest number of cases are in the 20 to 29 year olds,” Ezike said in an interview.

“But when you see the individuals that are dying, it’s highest in the 80 and above, next highest 70 and above, next highest 60 and above, right in order down the line,” she continued. “So we know that though the primary group that’s getting infected is the 20-somethings, it does spread from there and get to our more vulnerable citizens in the state.”

What exactly are those 20-somethings doing to see such high transmission of the coronavirus? Living, Ezike said.

“They’re living, they are gathering, you know, they’re working, they’re dining,” she said. “Everything that they’re doing is an opportunity for spread.”

Said another way young people going about their ordinary lives, doing the things they’re doing ordinarily causes them to contract the disease which spreads from them to the elderly who die.

To be honest I think a finer breakdown would be helpful. I don’t believe, for example, that people in their 20s visit their great-grandparents a lot. I’m skeptical that everyone in each of those age cohorts is equally susceptible to the disease or to dying.

7 comments… add one
  • steve Link

    The older folks are more likely to die, but we are seeing lots of younger people, as I noted yesterday, needing hospitalization. At our institutions we have not yet altered elective procedures but we are rapidly approaching maximum bed capacity. We are getting desperate for nursing staff. (I think people in their 20s are working in places where they care for people in their 90s. They visit their parents who then visit their parents.)

    I kind of wish I could get one of our critical care docs to do a comment here. Our network is spread over a pretty wide area. So we take care of people from very rural areas and other areas that are more urban, though still not a major city like Philly. So in our rural area we have critically ill Covid pts who refuse to admit that they have Covid. It is all a hoax. Cant be true. Some are refusing therapeutics used to treat Covid. If Covid isn’t real, why would you need the drug? People wanting to sign out and leave because we cant figure out what is really wrong with them since it cant be Covid.

    Then my current favorite is the pt who thinks that the therapeutics he is receiving have chips in them so that the government can track them.

    Fun stuff.

    Steve

  • PD Shaw Link

    That sounds a little different than my county’s daily reports by age. Yesterday, positive tests were distributed:
    12% under 20
    16% in 20s
    20% in 30s
    12% in 40s
    18% in 50s
    11% in 60s
    12% in 70s and up

    That looks like what we normally see, which is two-thirds are roughly are in the 20s to 50s age deciles. The Director might be seeing a slightly different distribution across the state, but I suspect that 20s don’t stand out significantly from 30s. There might also be the issue that the college here participates in the U of Illinois’ constant, rapid testing program. I think the state throws out those test results for some analysis, and it might be helping lower infections among those students.

  • PD Shaw Link

    @steve, the hospital system my wife works for unmasked their daily covid report. She always knew higher numbers than the reported county data because the system has five hospitals and ostensibly serves 40 counties. She wasn’t supposed to tell anybody their numbers, I think because they didn’t want people to be scared away from the hospital. They said they’ve released the data now to show that the increase in COVID hospitalizations are real and show that they have space currently, but are long-term concerned. (Their chief competitor has so far declined to report their data)

    Unfortunately, they don’t report age groups of those hospitalized, but what I see yesterday is 27 people were admitted with COVID symptoms, 10 of those were placed in intensive care and on the same day 25 people went home who had COVID, and none died. It looks to me like some sort of stability has been reached where the numbers coming and going closely match, and maybe that’s because people are getting therapeutics. But I’m not sure how long it would take for the hospital to get overwhelmed without that. This is triple the number of COVID hospitalizations as the first wave.

  • steve Link

    PD- Our system has 11 hospitals. No idea how many counties we actually cover. I can see almost any numbers I want to see. Some I see regularly, but others I can get by asking. I am really middle mgt (that is my hospital position. In our corporation I am king, or something.) but it is a pretty open, close knit mgt group. We are seeing shorter admissions, so our ADC (average diary census) is not as high as we would have expected for the number of admissions we are seeing. We hope/think that is at least partially due to aggressive therapies, but maybe its just a different population or virus. Who knows. I am very concerned about bed status. If our numbers stay at current rates we have as many Covid pts as we had at peak in 2 weeks or so. At one place where we work the local prison is 5 miles away. They have over a hundred people with Covid, a lot of them on oxygen. If those start decompensating we are really screwed. That hospital is already full and the next couple of ones closest are full.

    On the overwhelmed issue I will say it is worse, I think, if we are swamping the ICUs like we saw in the spring. ICU care takes so many more staff and you need special staff. It takes a lot of time and physical effort to care for the ICU Covid pt. We had teams of people just to turn them over so we could prone them. Its a little easier if all they need is regular beds. That said, if we do start filling those ICU beds we wont have the extra staff to help this time.

    Steve

  • PD Shaw Link

    @steve, yeah, their CEO said their biggest concern was staffing. I’m somewhat cynical about some of that because a couple of months ago they announced that they were no longer going to pay for comp time accrued past 9/30, which was apparently a pretty lucrative perk. A lot of people thinking about retiring, did so in September. Older people. They have less staff now than they did in the Spring.

    I would not be surprised if Illinois has peaked or getting close to peak for cases. But hospitalizations might still rise for awhile.

  • steve Link

    PD- Our network stopped a lot of OT and bonus plans a few months ago. They have started everything up again and are increasing them. If I hadnt promised to stay another year or two I would retire.

    To answer a question you had earlier our network does require flu shots, but they only made them mandatory maybe 10 years ago? However long ago, it was before I had the flu.

    Steve

  • steve Link

    Oops, meant after.

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