Hospitalization rates for young adults hit record highs

London: Amid the Delta variant outbreak in the United States, hospitalization rates for adults in their 30s due to Covid-19 have reached record levels, making it the “youth pandemic.”

New Covid-19 hospital admissions for patients in their 30s reached an average of 1,113 per day for the week that ended Wednesday, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

That average daily hospitalization rate had jumped 22.6% from 908 in the previous seven days, according to the CDC.

“All of these younger age groups than we previously thought were relatively untouched by the severe consequences of Covid up to age 50, these hospital admission rates are all increasing at a dizzying rate unfortunately,” Dr James Lawler, co-director of the Global Center for Health Safety at the University of Nebraska Medical Center was quoted by the Daily Mail.

“So it’s not just the unvaccinated pandemic in the United States, it’s a youth pandemic now,” he added.

CDC data shows that around 30 people accounted for 170,852 out of more than 2.5 million new hospital admissions for Covid-19 since August 2020, according to the report.

Data shows that the seven-day average of new hospitalizations for people aged 18 to 29 reached 694 on Wednesday, up 20.7% from the previous week’s average of 575. Since August, 124,633 people aged 18 to 29 have been hospitalized.

The average daily hospitalization rate for children under 17 also increased by 31.2%, from 201 to 263, according to CDC data. There have been 47,172 hospitalizations of Covid-19 minor children since last August.

Children under 12 are still not eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine, while vaccination rates for young adults under 40 continue to lag.

Trends in immunization data from the CDC show that only 49.6% of adults aged 25 to 39 are considered fully vaccinated, while 45.1% of adults aged 18 to 24 are fully vaccinated.

“It’s not just a huge proportion of patients admitted to intensive care with Covid, it’s also a much younger demographic than what we’ve seen before,” Lawler said.

“And again, I think this is another myth that young people don’t get very sick. And that is clearly not the case, especially with Delta waves, ”he noted.