The novel coronavirus appears to severely affect people over the age of 60, who account for 81% of all infection-related deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The first large analysis of more than 44,000 cases from China found the death rate was 10 times higher in very old people compared to young people, unlike H1N1, which hit young adults the hardest in the outbreak years of 2009-10.
The data from China showed that only a handful of the children and teenagers (0-19 years) affected were hospitalised with fever, cough or other mild respiratory symptoms. They account for 0.1% of the total Covid-19-related deaths. Young adults (20-39 years) account for 2.5% of the total deaths, as per the data.
Muskan Kapdi, a first-year student of medicine in China Three Gorges University in Yichang city in the Hubei province, was among the first set of evacuees rescued from Wuhan and quarantined at the Indo Tibetan Border Police’s Chhawla campus from February 2 to February 17.
“We were not worried about the Wuhan outbreak till a group of international students was taken away to be isolated on January 24 and 25. After that, policemen started stopping us every two metres to test us for fever and then the college quarantined us in the hostel, giving us a thermometer to keep checking for fever and sending us food, which we cooked and ate inside,” said Kapdi, who turned 19 on January 14 this year, just five days before she was quarantined in the hostel. Though she and other students travelled in a bus to Wuhan, from where they were evacuated, during the peak of the outbreak, none of them was infected.
This is in sharp contrast to the transmission of H1N1, which affected young adults the most and largely spared older adults.
“During the 2009 H1N1 outbreak, older people had some immunity against H1N1 from their earlier exposure to viruses similar to H1N1 in the first half of the 20th century…,” said Dr NK Ganguly, former director general, Indian Council of Medical Research.
“We don’t know enough about the Covid-19 behaviour, and until we do, the protection measures remain the same as all other respiratory viruses,” said Dr Ganguly.
