U.S. COVID-19 Latest: Harvard Study Shows COVID-19 Now Becoming Leading Cause Of Death Among Those Aged 25-44 in America
Source: U.S. COVID-19 Latest Oct 26, 2020 4 years, 3 weeks, 6 days, 16 hours, 14 minutes ago
U.S. COVID-19 Latest: The sad findings from a new study by researchers from Harvard University Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospitals, Massachusetts General Hospital and also experts from Yale University show that COVID-19 is now becoming the leading cause of death between those aged 25 to 44 years of age, surpassing deaths from unintentional opioid overdoses!
The study findings were published on a preprint server and have yet to be peer-reviewed.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.21.20217174v1
The COVID-19 disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has wreaked havoc across the world, affecting individuals from all walks of life. High-risk populations are at a heightened risk of severe illness and death, including the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions.
To date the COVID-19 has caused a marked increase in all-cause deaths in the United States, particularly among the elderly above 65 years old. Since younger adults have lower infection fatality rates, little attention has been focused on the mortality burden of COVID-19 in this age group.
As of the 26
th of October 2020, more than 8.6 million Americans have been infected with the COVID-19 disease and more than 61,000 new SARS-CoV-2 infections were reported in the last 24 hours and more than 225,782 Americans have died from the COVID-19 disease so far. Due to concealed reporting, under-reporting and cover-ups by the Trump administration and Republicans, actual figures are expected to be far higher. New York alone reported the highest number of deaths so far surpassing 33,000.
A study team from Brigham and Women's Hospital, Department of Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School, aimed to determine changes in all-cause mortality or excess deaths among adults between 25 and 44 years old in the United States. Further, they also want to identify the years of lost life (YLL) among this age group.
The study team used data provided by the National Center for Health Statistics at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to arrive at the study findings. The data consists of the most recent public data for all-cause mortality between 2019 and 2020, unintentional drug overdose deaths, unintentional opioid-specific deaths, and COVID-19 deaths among adults ages 25 to 44 during the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.
The researchers compared COVID-19-related deaths in the age group during the pandemic period with all drug overdose deaths and opioid-specific overdose deaths in each of the 10 Health and Human Services (HHS) regions during 2018, the most recent year for which data are available.
The team also computed for the YLL due to COVID-19 and for all-cause excess deaths that happened between March and July. Excess mortality means the deaths that occurred in 2020, less the 2019 deaths during the corresponding period.
The study findings showed that between March and July 2020, there were more than 74,000 all-cause deaths among adults between 25 and 44 years old.
The number is 14,155 more than during the same period in 2019, up by 23 percent. In regions such as New York, New Jersey, Louisiana, A
rkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas, California, Arizona, Nevada, and Hawaii, the deaths tied to COVID-19 exceeded the 2018 unintentional opioid overdose deaths during at least one month.
There were 2,450 COVID-19 deaths recorded in these states during the pandemic compared to 2,445 opioid deaths during the same period in 2018. From March to July in 2018, the U.S. has recorded 10,347 deaths related to opioid overdosage, leading to 472,608 YLL among adults between 25 and 44 years old.
It was found that amid the pandemic, there were 4,055 recorded COVID-19 deaths in the same age group, resulting in 175,631 YLL. When the team considered all of the 14,155 excess deaths in 2020, young adults accounted for 627,872 YLL, surpassing the YLL from overdose-related deaths during the same period in 2018.
The study team concluded that based on the study findings, that COVID-19 has likely become the leading cause of death among young adults in some areas of the U.S. during the pandemic. The team also noted that in these regions, the COVID-19 related mortality is similar to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/ Acquired Immunodeficiency Disease Syndrome (AIDS) epidemic at its peak in the country between 1994 and 1995.
Apart from the U.S., other countries with high coronavirus cases include India, with more than 8 million cases, Brazil, with more than 5.4 million cases, Russia, with more than 1.5 million cases, France, with more than 1.13 million cases, among others.
The situation is worsening in Europe and United States with record high infections in the last one week and also ICU wards are being overwhelmed.
The COVID-19 global case toll has topped 43 million, and the infection has now claimed more than 1.153 million deaths. Of these, at least 28.89 million have already ‘recovered’ with about 91 percent of them expected to go through the long term health complications of COVID-19.
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