Patients admitted to ICU with severe COVID are getting younger

From the beginning of the pandemic, the old and the immunocompromised were deemed as the main target of the virus, but that trend has begun to change in the recent months.

Younger COVID patients

The UK is currently battling its third wave, and medical experts have noticed that an increasing number of COVID patients that are being admitted to the Intensive Care Unit are under 30 years old.

Given that one-third of people aged between 18 and 29 have still not had a single dose, authorities are now urging the younger population to get vaccinated as soon as possible. Professor Adam Finn, member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation told LBC:

We have had people under 30 on our intensive care unit and also requiring high-level oxygen therapy.

This is not always trivial in young adults. There are younger people really getting seriously ill at the moment, so that’s one good reason to think about having the vaccine.

Severe COVID

Although younger unvaccinated people who contract the deadly virus have lower chances of losing their life, medics have nonetheless been witnessing healthy people with no prior medical problems develop fatal forms of COVID. Dr. Samantha Batt-Rawden, a senior intensive care registrar said:

The vast majority of those requiring intensive care are unvaccinated: some of them will die. It is heartbreaking for us as NHS staff to watch people suffer unnecessarily knowing that this almost certainly could have been prevented by the vaccine.

We are seeing patients in their 30s, or even in their 20s, who are fit and have no other medical problems on ICUs [intensive care units]. As an ICU doctor I am begging you to have the vaccine. Please don’t let not having the jab become the biggest mistake of your life.

According to The Guardian, the latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revealed that currently cases in 16 to 24-year-olds are six times more common than in 50 to 69-year-olds.