Younger adults shouldn't be complacent about the risk from coronavirus
"If you're a younger adult who's comforted yourself with the idea that if you were to get COVID-19, it probably wouldn't be too bad, don't be complacent.
Yes, studies continue to show that the older you are, the more likely you are to die from COVID-19 — especially for people with other conditions like diabetes and coronary heart disease.
But health experts are warning that it's not impossible for younger adults to have a severe form of the disease or even die from it, even those who don't have any other obvious risk factors.
Bruce Aylward, who led the World Health Organisation's recent mission to assess the pandemic in China, said his team found there had been many deaths in people without other health conditions, and in people decades younger than the groups deemed most at risk.''
"Intensive care units across China and across Italy are full of people who are young. And it's the young who are dying with no obvious risk factors," Dr Swan said.
"When this takes off, it's young people who hit your intensive care units and you're making decisions between a 40 year old and a 60 year old ... terrible ethical conditions.
"And when you look at the 30 and 40 year olds who are dying, they don't have heart disease, they don't have diabetes, they don't have obvious risk factors. So there's a random element here."
