Spreading faster, hitting harder - why young Brazilians are dying of Covid

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Spreading faster, hitting harder – why young Brazilians are dying of Covid

Highly transmissible variant and behavioural factors blamed as intensive care units fill with younger patients

Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Fri 16 Apr 2021 10.00 BST

-snip-

When Covid first hit Brazil last February it was, as elsewhere, considered mainly a threat to the ageing or infirm. A year later, as Brazil grapples with by far the most traumatic phase of its epidemic, a troubling trend has emerged, as intensive care units fill with younger patients such as Castro, some seemingly battling more severe forms of the disease. An unusually high number of infant fatalities has also been reported with more than 1,000 Brazilian babies dying last year compared with 43 in the US.

Brazilians have been particularly shocked by the case of Paulo Gustavo, a 42-year-old television star who has spent the past month fighting for his life in a Rio ICU despite being previously fit and healthy. Last week, the Brazilian Association of Intensive Care Medicine said that for the first time, most Covid patients in ICU were under 40 – a finding echoed by frontline doctors.

“We’re seeing a really big increase in young patients,” said Pedro Carvalho, a critical care doctor from the country’s northeast whose hospital’s ICUs have admitted Covid victims aged 27, 28, 29, 32, 33 and 34 in recent days. Two were women who had just given birth. The wife of the 33-year-old patient is expecting their fourth child but he is on dialysis and his chances of survival slim. “It really feels like we’re at the eye of the hurricane and things are just getting worse and more intense,” Carvalho said.

Clarisse Bressan, a tropical medicine specialist working at Rio’s Fiocruz Covid hospital, said she had detected a similar shift in the last three weeks, including a disturbing rise in the number of pregnant women being admitted. “The average age really has gone down. One Friday we had more patients in their 40s than over-80s.”

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/16/spreading-faster-hitting-harder-why-young-brazilians-are-dying-of-covid

[patphil]

1. Brazil has the 2nd highest number of cases and fatalities of any country.

Of course the USA is #1.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?utm_campaign=homeAdvegas1?%22#countries

It's no coincidence that these two countries both had arrogant, callous, ego driven, self-absorbed jackasses running their countries when the pandemic hit.
We flushed Trump, but Bolsonaro still leads Brazil.
Unfortunately Trump's legacy of reckless disregard for medical science and stubborn insistence against taking any safety precautions still holds sway in 10's of millions of Americans.
But in Brazil, Bolosonaro still runs the show and he has consistently demonstrated that he couldn't care less what happens to the people there. On March 5th, after 2 straight days of record deaths, he told his people to "stop whining and move on".

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/stop-whining-bolsonaro-tells-brazilians-record-covid-deaths-rcna360

What an asshole!

[Judi Lynn]

2. What an unexpected turn, after the Orange Lummox insisted younger people are never affected.

Here's a photo of the formerly healthy tv star, Paulo Gustavo:





Dressed as one of the characters in his
comedy show.