Now, we know more about people the most likely to catch and develop a serious kind of coronavirus disease. In addition to elderly people, discover who really has to protect themselves from any interaction and stay home.
We know from the beginning that elderly people are the most vulnerable concerning the Covid-19 epidemic. Pr. Yazdan Yazadnpanah, head of infectious disease unite at the Bichat hospital, said on Tuesday that “more than half of the people in ICU are over 60 years old”.
The HCSP shares recommendations for the following population likely to develop more serious symptoms:
- People who are 70 +
- Patients with cardiovascular history: complicated high blood pressure, cerebrovascular accident or coronaropathy, heart surgery, heart failure NYHA III or IV
- Unbalanced insulin-dependent diabetics or showing subsequent complications to their disease
- People suffering from a chronic respiratory disease likely to decompensate in case of viral infection, that only involves “serious chronic asthma” Health direction general says. “Apparently, asthma in young is not a risk factor. Only non-controlled asthma or asthma that evolved into chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, especially in elderly people, is a risk factor” head doctor at Unisanté, university center of general medicine and public health in Lausanne Blaise Genton says
- Patients with dialyzed chronic kidney disease
- Obese persons, overweight people with a body mass index over 40
- People with cancer. It is said that the risk to be hospitalized is four times bigger and the risk to die is 10 times bigger in people suffering from cancers. This bigger risk seems to be particularly important in those with lymphopenia or neutropenia, characteristics often found in people treated with chemotherapy, or patients who have been having multiple treatment lines. All in all, patients with solid cancers, and especially those recently treated with surgery or chemotherapy in the months before were more likely than the overall population to develop serious and deadly kinds of the virus quickly.
Moreover, pregnant women are also at risk as they can get into labor sooner than expected if they have fever or heavy cough. But the only Chinese study focusing on a very small panel of 9 pregnant women in Wuhan is rather reassuring since no complication has been noticed for them, and their babies were healthy at birth.
