Variants are driving rise in younger, sicker patients needing specialized care to receive oxygen: doctors
A disturbing trend is gaining ground in Ontario — more COVID-19 patients in the ICU who are younger and sicker than before, with the new variants blamed for these infections.
“Our ICU is already full today,” he said. “As are most of the ICU around the GTA. I think we're all quite concerned about what's going to happen in the next few weeks.”
“Now it's this wall of people who are all in their 30s,” she said. “It's not a novelty anymore.”
She wants the public to know that, “Yes, this is a young person’s illness too.”
Most worrisome is that these younger patients are becoming very sick fast.
“Seems that variants of concern are now the dominant COVID-19 that's circulating in Ontario,” Ferguson said.
Because the variants are much more transmissible, “more patients and people who will get infected with variants are more likely to have severe disease,” he explained, “progressing much more quickly from being well [to] being extremely sick, over the course of just a few days.”
Coronavirus variants are believed to be behind an increase in younger and sicker COVID-19 patients in the ICU, who are in need of specialized care only available at a handful of hospitals.
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