April 20,2020
A false rumor about the age-vulnerability to Covid-19 may shatter the millennial’s hopes to live.
Young people across the world are ignoring the affective impact of the novel coronavirus on all ages and compromising its spread. This section of population has easily become the victim of #infodemic that the virus affects the older age much.
But this is not true.
“Although older people are hardest hit, younger people are not spared,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference earlier this week. “I have a message for young people: you are not invincible; this virus could put you in hospital for weeks or even kill you.”
The WHO has warned the younger population against complacency as most of the time people of these ages are ignoring the advice to practice social distancing.
A report titled Severe Outcomes Among Patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019 states, “Clinicians who care for adults should be aware that COVID-19 can result in severe disease among persons of all ages”.
Even reports from Italy and France are proving that young people from twenty to those in early forties are falling seriously ill of the pandemic; most of which require intensive care.
Available data from the website of Statista raises a serious concern that in Italy, the hardest hit country in Europe, almost a quarter of the nearly 28,000 coronavirus patients are between the ages of 19 and 50.
Similar trends have been seen in the U.S. Among nearly 2,500 of the first coronavirus cases in the U.S., 705 were aged 20 to 44, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Between 15% and 20% eventually ended up in the hospital, including as many as 4% who needed intensive care.
FAKE: Covid-19 attacks people of older ages; younger population must not worry.
FACT: “The very notion that ‘COVID-19 only affects older people’ is factually wrong. As a colleague of mine recently said, “Young people are not invincible”. 10% to 15% of people under 50 have moderate to severe infection. Severe cases of the disease have been seen in people in their teens or twenties, with many requiring intensive care and some unfortunately passing away. Age is not the only risk for severe disease”, Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe in Copenhagen on April 2, 2020.
#CheckTheFake is a movement against #Infodemic in this crisis, initiated by Dr Anamika Ray Memorial Trust #ARMT (www.armt.in) in collaboration with The Assam Tribune and Northeast Now (www.nenow.in) to create awareness on #fakenews on #Coronavirus and improve media literacy through #Cartoons. ARMT Research