To make things even more challenging, most states are also primarily reporting the overall number of cases per age group - rather than the percentage of that demographic’s population. This difference makes it harder to compare the age ranges involved in spreading the virus currently and historically. (These age groupings might be a legacy from the earlier days of the pandemic, when we were trying to better understand the illness’s severity in older adults.)Īrizona also displays cumulative cases since the beginning of the pandemic for each age group, whereas California highlights the number of new cases by age group for each week. But this group is also the largest span of years the state measures, compared to other groups (such as the 55-to-64 age range, which spans just nine years). States are on their own to decide whom they group together in their statistics, which can make the definition of “young” very different from place to place - and result in skewed numbers.Īrizona, for example, has lumped together people ages 20 to 44, which shows a huge number of cases. Getting a clear picture of the age demographics of new Covid-19 cases is not as simple as you’d think. Who exactly counts as “young,” anyway? Due to imperfect and inconsistent data, it’s hard to say. Let’s unpack some of these, which can help us better understand - and possibly slow - this new trend. Some of these factors include mixed public health messaging and premature reopenings, young people skipping precautions because they perceive a lower risk of getting very sick, people returning to jobs, and more testing of people without symptoms.
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A thread on how to distinguish between them.
What does it mean that the median age of new cases is dropping in some areas? I see three possible explanations, not all good. “We first see it in the community, and then we see it in the residents and staff, and then you see the deaths,” David Grabowski, a health care policy expert at Harvard Medical School, told the Wall Street Journal. This seems to already be happening, with assisted living facility cases climbing in Houston and Phoenix, as well as in Florida now. They can also spread it to older people who are much more vulnerable to severe infection and death.
Younger people, on average, are less likely to become severely ill and die of Covid-19 - although many do. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a July 6 press briefing. Nationwide, “the average age of people getting infected is now a decade and a half younger than it was a few months ago,” Dr. Even Virginia, where cases have been relatively stable, has seen an increase in new cases among people in their 20s.
In California, which just reclosed bars and indoor dining, as of July 15, people ages 18 to 34 made up the largest proportion of new cases (24.3 percent), with 35- to-49-year-olds as the second-largest group (19.3 percent of new cases). Other states with worrying rises in case numbers are seeing a similar trend. In Texas’s two largest counties, Harris (home to Houston) and Dallas, about half of the new cases have been in people under 40. In Arizona, 61 percent of Covid-19 cases are in people under the age of 45. Florida now has more Covid-19 cases than any other state.