Intensive care, that’s why the virus has not improved: “Severe cases are the same in March”

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Contagion cases have risen again in recent weeks, returning to May levels, but with far fewer deaths and even fewer intensive care admissions, which in any case have doubled in the last 10 days from 66 to 121. It is a proof that the virus, as some experts and observers also claim, has gotten better and therefore less aggressive? For anesthetists and resuscitators, doctors who work on the front line in intensive care, the answer leaves no doubt: “Covid-19 patients who are hospitalized in these wards are no less serious than those who arrived in March or April” .

A warning from those who work in intensive care

“We are not convinced by what some have said in recent months that the virus has become less aggressive. The epidemic curve is going up, as are ICU cases, which have a lower average age. Fortunately, we are far from the level of red alert in the months of March and April, thanks to social restraint, “he warns. Alessandro Vergallo, national president of Aaroi-Emac, the association of Italian hospital resuscitators in practice, doctors working in intensive care units where the most serious Covid patients are hospitalized. Vergallo emphasizes how “the epidemic curve is increasing and also the number of people hospitalized in intensive care” with a fundamental clinical data and that is that “Covid-19 patients who are hospitalized in these rooms are no less serious than those who arrived in March or April ».

Because fewer deaths and serious cases than in March

If at this time the virus is the same as last March, why are there hundreds of fewer deaths with infections similar to those in early May? One answer comes from the fact that some important factors have changed since the beginning of the epidemic and also the ways in which people are hunted for whom they are infected. As the latest reports produced weekly by the Ministry of Health and the Higher Institute of Health show, the age of those infected has dropped significantly: if previously Covid patients were above all over 60 years old, now the age has been reduced to half, with the average number of cases falling to 29 years. A novelty, this one, which has caused asymptomatic cases or in any case the number of people with milder symptoms to skyrocket because, as is known, Covid hurts more among the elderly. Compared to March, the way to find new positives for Covid has radically changed: if only symptomatic swabs were done in March, now in addition to doing many more tests (we have more than 100,000 per day) 60% of the cases that are discovered come from positive case tracing or screening activities (quick swabs, serological tests, etc.) that reveal many asymptomatic patients. A fact, this, that also allows to discover Covid patients early, thus being able to treat them in time if necessary and that photographs the evolution of infections in a more realistic way than in recent months when many asymptomatic people did not end in the network of controls and the official number of cases was only the tip of the iceberg.