The World Health Organization warned Tuesday that young people are becoming the primary drivers of the spread of the coronavirus novel in many countries – a worrying trend that experts fear could grow in the United States as many colleges and schools reopen.
© Gerry Broome / AP
Students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were told this week that personal undergraduate learning was canceled following a cluster of cases of coronavirus on campus.
Many peoples in Asia, who have previously experienced infections at unbearably low rates, have experienced storms in recent weeks at the same time as the age of those infected youths has shifted.
“People in their 20s, 30s and 40s are increasingly driving the spread,” Takeshi Kasai, the WHO’s Western Pacific regional director, said in a newsletter on Tuesday. “The epidemic is changing.”
More than half of confirmed infections in Australia and the Philippines have been in people under 40 in recent weeks, WHO officials said, a stark contrast to overweight elderly patients of previous months. In Japan, 65 percent of recent infections occurred in people younger than 40.
Because symptoms are often mild in young, Kasai observed, many are unaware that they are infected.
“This increases the risk of spillovers for the most vulnerable: the elderly, the sick, people in long-term care, people living in densely populated urban areas and rural areas,” Kasai said.
The global health agency’s warnings come at noon in intense debate in the United States over returning students to classes. To date, at least 168,000 people in the United States have died from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, according to a Washington Post analysis.
For colleges and universities, where students in their late teens and 20s live in tight quarters and mingle at off-campus meetings, the problem has become particularly acute.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last week confidently opened the campus with social distance measures, including freeing dorms and blocking chairs in classrooms, forcing students to sit further apart. But abruptly, on Monday, the school decided to close again when 177 students tested positive for the virus, as outbreaks erupted in living quarters and a fraternite home.
Other colleges report the same on numbers.
On Tuesday, the University of Notre Dame announced that it would suspend at least two weeks of personal lessons after reports that 147 people had tested positive since 3 August. Michigan State University also said Tuesday it will shift to distance learning for the fall semester after 187 people in surrounding East Lansing were linked to an outbreak at a college bar in July.
At least 189 people at the University of Kentucky have tested positive for the virus since Aug. 3, according to the university’s website, which represents just over 1 percent of those tests.
But public universities in several states are pushing ahead with plans to completely renovate campuses, including those in Georgia and Florida, which have one of the highest infection rates in the nation.
While campuses have not been ready to close those campuses in recent weeks, drivers in Texas and Florida have set limits on bars and alcohol consumption, citing the skyrocketing number of young people contracting the virus. The actions came after videos of packed bars and crowded house parties with no partygoers wearing masks put several college towns on high alert.
An analysis by Davidson College in North Carolina that examined two public institutions in each state found that 23 had some sort of instruction in person planning. Experts say they are doing so in the face of fierce warning signs of a potentially dangerous fall term ahead.
The public colleges and universities in California have decided to conduct most classes virtually. Several others, including Brown University and the University of Maryland, had plans to open the course, but abruptly reversed before the start of the school year.
Four major high school athletic conferences – the Big Ten, the Pacific-12, the Mid-American Conference and the Mountain West – have canceled fall seasons to protect players and other students who would normally play in stadiums and arenas for games. public.
Students at several U.S. universities have staged “die-in” demonstrations – socially disturbed on the grass by mock tombstones – to protest against reopening, thanks to concerns that personal lessons could result in rapid spread of the coronavirus on campuses . In recent days, such protests have erupted at Elon University in North Carolina, Georgia Tech, the University of Arizona, the University of Georgia and Virginia Commonwealth University.
Meanwhile, K-12 schools have similar problems. Schools in Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee that reopened this month had to close or change course when students or staff tested positive for the coronavirus, forcing thousands to quarantine.
The closures have raised fears among educators set to return to school this month, including in Florida, where the state has mandated almost every school system to open its doors. There, the state’s largest teachers’ union has Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is indicted, an ally of President Trump who has been criticized several times for scientific scientists and public health officials.
Many students across the country returned to classrooms this month to have plans for instruction for individuals abducted when students or staff tested positive or had to be quarantined.
In Mississippi, at least 2,035 students and 589 teachers have been ordered to quarantine because of possible exposure to coronavirus, state officials said Monday. Those numbers came after some schools resumed instruction on Monday, while others had not yet returned classes.
In Arizona, one school district voted to reopen, but all classes had to be canceled Monday because many teachers refused to perform.
In a second news conference on Tuesday in Geneva, WHO officials warned school systems to exercise caution, but also pleaded with young people to stop risking their behavior if the pandemic continues.
“We just have to make sure that the message comes out, especially to young people, especially to children and young adults, that you are not involuntary here and that you can get infected,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the emerging disease group. WHO and unit for zoonosis. “We see young people dying from this virus.”
In the United States, the virus has taken a disproportionate toll on children of color. Hispanic children are about eight times more likely and Black children five times more likely to be hospitalized with covid-19 than their White peers, according to a study released this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nick Anderson, Antonia Noori Farzan, Jennifer Hassan and Brittany Shammas contributed to this report.
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