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RIO – Portal data Covid–19 Brazil, which has stood out for the success of its projections for the coronavirus, show that the disease in the country is concentrated in the age group ranging from 20 to 49 years, with numbers close to 500 thousand cases. In the municipality of Rio, 43% of the records correspond to people between 30 and 49 years old.
And although deaths follow a global trend (85% of deaths are over 60 years old), the percentage of deaths observed among Brazilians under 50 years of age has been higher than that observed in other countries in Europe and the United States.
Fiocruz pulmonologist Margareth Dalholm was the first to strongly warn, even in March, that the country would “rejuvenate” the disease, as a result of the combination of the Brazilian age pyramid with the low degree of social distance.
– We are not talking about mild or asymptomatic cases. We refer to people who became seriously ill and added to the sad statistic of confirmed cases. And the confirmed cases in our country, without evidence and with a very high underreporting, are the deceased and those admitted to hospitals with a serious condition of Covid-19 – emphasizes Dalholm, who is part of the scientific committee that advises the government of the state of Rio de Janeiro in fighting against the new coronavirus.
The pulmonologist joined the numerical analysis specialist Domingos Alves, from the Covid-19 Brazil portal, to investigate and analyze the impact of the disease in Brazil. The portal brings together scientists and students from various Brazilian universities.
The analyzes took into account official data from the Ministry of Health, the Transparency Portal of the Civil Registry and the Covid-19 Brazil portal, which makes estimates of unreported cases and projections of the evolution of the pandemic. Biomedical informatics specialist Filipe Bernardi detailed the data by neighborhood in the city of Rio.
– It is easy to see in the official bulletin of the municipality the impact of Covid-19 on people between 30 and 49 years old, who represent 43% of the total. Despite the fact that the number of deaths is higher in older ages, there is a significant percentage of young people hospitalized, says Alves, a specialist in computer modeling and leader of the Health Intelligence Laboratory (LIS) of the Ribeirão Preto School of Medicine. , University of São Paulo
He points out that, in general, deaths in Brazil follow the world trend, being more frequent in those over 60 years of age (85%).
However, the percentage of deaths observed in the country for people under 50 years of age has been higher than that observed in other countries, such as Italy, Spain and the United States. In Brazil, 7% of those killed were between 40 and 50 years old; and 3.9% between 20 and 39 years old.
– The young man has more immune defenses. So he dies less, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t get seriously ill. The situation is very serious. Many people still don’t understand that social distance is the only option we have to contain the coronavirus, says Dalholm.
Being young is not being immune
Being new, having no risk factors and practicing physical activity does not guarantee anyone’s immunity. For example, one of the patients in Dalholm is a 21-year-old girl who lives in the South Zone of Rio and has an athletic profile. Last week, he began experiencing symptoms of Covid-19, including a burning sensation in his calf.
An examination revealed thrombi, one of the characteristics of the disease. Her only possible risk factor, says the doctor, was taking the contraceptive pill.
The comparison between the age distribution of the official bulletin and that of the Covid-19 Brazil portal shows an important difference. The bulletin registers the people who have been analyzed and, therefore, hospitalized (serious and critical cases). The portal considers all infected, including asymptomatic and mild symptomatic.
“This population, probably the vast majority of mild symptomatic or asymptomatic people, is the wood that fuels the spread of the epidemic,” says Alves.
Margareth Dalholm stresses that the old pyramid is not everything. The socioeconomic factor also weighs:
– The youth with the highest risk are not the middle and upper class, who can afford home Office. They are the lower class, they need to go to work. People who do not have enough information about the disease and who live in communities with high circulation of the coronavirus. The disease reflects our demographics and our social disparity.
The calculation covers the gap
The Covid-19 Brazil portal has estimated the number of cases of infected people in the country through inverse modeling. In this way, they avoid the absence of data, since Brazil continues without massive tests.
The group uses it as the basis for calculating the number of reported deaths. Although deaths are also underreported, they are a more consolidated indicator of the national panorama.
Scientists apply South Korea’s fatality rate and fit the numbers to Brazil’s age pyramid. The Asian country is used as a base because it has consolidated evidence data from the first cases.
Domingos Alves says that the methodology used is available on the Covid-19 Brazil project website.
