Winter has already ended, and the spread of coronavirus is only gaining momentum. Because of Covid-19, Russians were even called on to rest in Dagestan, and not in Italy, which came first in terms of mortality from coronavirus.
The number of deaths from coronavirus in this country as of March 11, 2020 reached 366 people (or 4.96% of the 7.3 thousand cases). Only on March 8, 133 people died.
And if we take the share of infected from the total number of residents of the country, then South Korea leads here. For every million citizens, there are 142.1 confirmed cases of coronavirus infection.
Here's what the top 10 countries look like, where at the moment the largest number of infected with coronavirus is recorded.
- China.
- Italy.
- Iran.
- South Korea.
- France.
- Spain.
- Germany.
- USA.
- Japan.
- Netherlands.
However, the virus acts very selectively. He does not touch some, but in others it causes the development of a serious or even fatal disease. Earlier, we examined in detail the facts about the appearance, symptoms and treatment of coronavirus. And in this article we will consider in detail the main risk groups during an outbreak of coronavirus.
Elderly defenseless before Covid-19
The vast majority of cases of coronavirus in China - namely 87% - are recorded in people aged 30 to 79 years. According to experts from the Chinese Center for Disease Control, this situation may be related to lifestyle, because adults are in constant contact with other people.
Teens and people over the age of 20 also communicate with other people in educational institutions, at work, and in public transport, but they are rarely diagnosed with Covid-19.
- Of all the sick Chinese citizens, only 8.1% were people aged 20,
- 1.2% were teenagers
- and in 0.9% of cases, people over 9 years of age or younger were infected with coronavirus.
Who could face death from coronavirus
If we take the number of deaths from coronavirus, then the bias towards the elderly becomes even stronger.
As of February 2020, 2.3% of all cases of death were confirmed in China.
- But a high 14.8% mortality rate among people 80 years of age and older probably reflects the presence of other diseases, weaker immunity, or simply poor overall health.
- The mortality rate among 50-year-old patients was 1.3%.
- In 40-year-old patients, it is even lower - 0.4%.
- And a very low chance of dying from coronavirus in people aged 10 to 39 years. It is 0.2%.
Why do young people rarely get coronavirus?
Young people, unlike older people, almost do not get coronavirus. According to WHO, the incidence rate in people under the age of 18 is only 2.4% of all reported cases.
Even cases of Covid-19 in children and adolescents aged 10 to 19 years are rare. At the beginning of February 2020, 549 cases of infection in this age group, or 1.2% of the total number of cases in China, were recorded. Only one of the patients has died.
One intriguing explanation of the youth’s apparent resistance to Covid-19: in areas near the Chinese province of Hubei, young children are often exposed to other coronaviruses. This may give them partial immunity to Covid-19. However, this does not explain why young people in other countries of the world are rarely exposed to coronavirus.
Pregnancy and coronavirus
In early February, Chinese state media reported that a woman infected with the virus gave birth to a baby who subsequently had a positive reaction to Covid-19. Scientists have suggested that newborns can become infected with the coronavirus from the mother’s body, through the placenta.
- Only one small study studied such a “vertical transmission”. Scientists from Wuhan University found that out of nine pregnant patients infected with Covid-19 (all had a cesarean section), no one passed the virus to their children. The health of all newborns was normal, and Apgar scores were high.
- Regarding the effect of coronavirus on the health of the expectant mother, Covid-19 does not seem to be very severe in pregnant women. At least, this conclusion was made by scientists on the basis of a small number of participants in the study.
- This is surprising because pregnancy suppresses the immune system (so that it does not attack the fetus). Therefore, usually pregnant women are more susceptible to respiratory pathogens than non-pregnant women. However, none of the nine women participating in the study developed severe pneumonia due to Covid-19.
- Maybe immunosuppression in pregnant women is actually useful for coronavirus. There is a version that some of the most serious symptoms of this disease are the result of an overly active immune response. This condition is called hypercytokinemia - cytokine molecules activate immune cells in the focus of inflammation, and the latter release a new portion of cytokines. This uncontrolled vicious cycle can be fatal.
Coronavirus prefers men, especially chronically ill
The effect of gender on susceptibility to Covid-19 has not been studied as well as the age-related effect, but preliminary data suggest that men may be more susceptible to the virus.
Researchers from WHO have found that in 51% of cases (out of the total number of cases), men suffer from coronavirus. These results overlap with a study in 1,099 patients in Wuhan conducted in late January. It turned out that 58% of patients are men.
It is possible that such an imbalance reflects the fact that sick men often traveled and (or) communicated with a large number of people.
But the difference in the mortality rate is quite real: 1.7% of women and 2.8% of men, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The difference between men and women in mortality can be related to how healthy the patient was before he became infected with the coronavirus.
- In people who have already suffered from a particular chronic disease, coronavirus is more severe. These are the conclusions from a large study in China.
- Scientists analyzed the effect of the underlying disease on 1590 patients with coronavirus. The age of the patient and his bad habits were taken into account.
- Researchers found that 399 patients with at least one additional disease (including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hepatitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or cancer) had a 79% increased chance of having intensive care or using an oxygen mask.
- Comorbidities also increase the risk of death from Covid-19. The mortality rate in patients who reported no other diseases was 0.9%. But in patients with cardiovascular diseases it reached 10.5%, in diabetics - 7.3%, and in people with chronic respiratory diseases such as COPD - 6.3%. A 6.0% increased risk of dying from coronavirus in patients with hypertension, and 5.6% in patients with cancer.
Brief conclusions
“Favorite audience” for coronavirus - people from 30 to 79 years old. In a special risk group are people from 60 years old.
Young children, adolescents, as well as young people under 20 years of age rarely get sick.
Coronavirus is more often diagnosed in men than in women, and men are more likely to die from this infection.
The chance of death and serious complications from coronavirus increases if the patient already suffers from a chronic disease such as diabetes, hypertension, cancer, etc.
Pregnant women can pass the disease to their children across the placenta (however, more research is needed on this topic). However, in pregnant women, coronavirus does not necessarily cause severe complications.
