Student Union
Neurological, Cardiac Issues Linger in COVID-19 Youth
Young people have suffered less under the COVID-19 virus than older people medically, but experts say the gap has narrowed, and so-called superspreading among the young is a factor.
“The epidemic is changing. People in their 20s, 30s and 40s are increasingly driving its spread,” said Dr. Takeshi Kasai, World Health Organization regional director for the Western Pacific, in a virtual press conference Aug. 18.
“Many are unaware they’re infected — with very mild symptoms or none at all. This can result in them unknowingly passing on the virus to others,” he added.
But on Sept. 28, a 19-year-old college student died, apparently of neurological complications related to the coronavirus.
Chad Dorrill, a sophomore at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, was diagnosed with COVID-19 in early September and suffered from later complications.
Dorrill developed additional complications even after being cleared by his doctor to return to Boone from his home county, according to an announcement from Appalachian State University Chancellor Sheri Everts.
“All of us must remain vigilant with our safety behaviors wherever we are in our community. We must flatten the curve, but to do so, we must persevere,” Everts said.
Research published Sept. 23 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta reports that the COVID-19 incidence was highest in adults ages 20 to 29 years during June to August 2020 in the United States.
The report states that “younger adults likely contribute to community transmission of COVID-19,” and that increases in positive test results among adults ages 20 to 39 preceded increases among those 60 and older by an average of 8.7 days across the southern United States in June 2020.
As of Oct. 5, the 18-to-29 age group led all positive cases in the United States with 23.7%, or 1,269,397 cases, according to CDC data. The 50-to-64 age group followed in second with 20.6% of positive cases, or 1,000,476 cases.
Research shows that the coronavirus carries long-term health implications, even in younger adults.
A multistate telephone survey of adults who had symptoms and tested positive for COVID-19 showed 35% had not returned to their usual state of health when interviewed two to three weeks after testing, according to a report by the CDC.
Twenty percent of 18-to-34-year-olds with no chronic medical conditions reported they had not returned to their usual state of health.
A study published this month in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that pediatric patients 18 and younger with acute or prior coronavirus infection can have a broad range of cardiac findings, even though they are experiencing mild symptoms.
While data show that cases were the highest among older adults in the early stages of the pandemic, German epidemiologist Karl Lauterbach suggested in April, when the pandemic was widespread in China and Italy, that thousands of young people may have helped seed the COVID-19 pandemic since last December.
“Experience maybe believes that it’s a severe disease for older people,” Lauterbach told VOA in March. “But we now know that many of the younger people also get severely ill and may sustain long-term consequences.”
“They get a very severe and atypical pneumonia and may end up in the [intensive care unit],” Lauterbach, a scientist and member of Germany’s Bundestag Parliament, said. “And they have way more severe disease than we initially believed.”
In December 2019, as COVID-19 was emerging in China, colleges and universities worldwide released hundreds of thousands of students home for winter break. Many of the more than 360,000 Chinese students who study in the U.S. returned to China for the holiday.
A month later, they and other international students returned to their campuses in the U.S. and around the world as COVID-19 was gaining speed.
In March, U.S. colleges and universities began their spring breaks, times when students traditionally head to warm beach destinations, such as in Florida, Texas and Mexico, to blow off steam after studying for midterms.
Dr. Sean O’Leary, associate professor of pediatrics-infectious diseases at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, told VOA that in response to the wave of COVID-19 cases in the U.S., many universities shut down their campuses, sent students home or asked them to return from spring break to clean out their rooms, and then put them on airplanes for points around the country.
“From the perspective of the U.S. as a country, was that the best choice?” O’Leary asked. Campuses were “one place where we knew there was widespread transmission.”
Lauterbach said the disease is insidious in younger people because they typically show only mild or no symptoms, and scientists now believe that 80% of COVID-19 transmission occurs among those who don’t seem ill.
A study by the American Academy of Pediatrics looked at more than 2,000 youths ages 18 and younger in China.
Doctors from Shanghai Children’s Medical Center and Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine wrote that where the virus first emerged, in Hubei province, 13% of confirmed cases had asymptomatic infection, a rate that “almost certainly understates the true rate of asymptomatic infection, since many asymptomatic children are unlikely to be tested.”
Research published Aug. 6 by JAMA Internal Medicine found that many COVID-19 patients remained asymptomatic for a prolonged period, and the viral load was similar to that of symptomatic patients.
Older children have also been shown to transmit the coronavirus as much as adults, according to a large study from South Korea.
The study, which analyzed nearly 65,000 people in South Korea, found that children younger than 10 were around half as likely to spread the virus as adults. However, young people ages 10 to 19 years old are more likely than other age groups to disperse COVID-19 into households.
Of 10,592 household contacts, 11.8% had COVID-19, with 18.6% being index patients ages 10 to 19. It was 1.9% for the 48,481 non-household contacts.
“We should make it clear to younger people that if they behave in a careless fashion, that they are not only putting themselves, their peers, older people and peers [with underlying conditions] at risk,” Lauterbach said, “but they put themselves at risk and their best friends. So, we need to convey a message that this is a serious disease for all age groups.”
“It is quite clear that not many young people die from the disease,” Lauterbach said.
“But it is astonishing that we see very, let's say, remarkable numbers of younger people in the ICU and also often on ventilator support,” he said.
“Currently, we do not know whether they will fully recover their lung function or not. We definitely do not know that for certain. So, we have to take this way more seriously than we did in the past.”
Kathleen Struck contributed to this report.
See all News Updates of the Day
- By VOA News
What to ask on a college visit
Sarah Wood lists 32 questions for applicants to learn more during a campus visit. (April 2024)
- By VOA News
US is now the most desirable country for international students
That’s according to this year’s Emerging Futures research survey, from education consultant IDP Connect. Other Western countries have slipped due to new visa restrictions and caps on international students. Read a summary of the research from ICEF Monitor. (April 30, 2024)
Pro-Palestinian protesters break through barricades to retake MIT encampment
Pro-Palestinian protesters who had been blocked by police from accessing an encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday broke through fencing, linked arms and encircled tents that remained there, as Columbia University canceled its university-wide commencement ceremony following weeks of pro-Palestinian protests.
Sam Ihns, a graduate student at MIT studying mechanical engineering and a member of MIT Jews for a Ceasefire, said the group has been at the encampment for the past two weeks and that they were calling for an end to the killing of thousands of people in Gaza.
"Specifically, our encampment is protesting MIT's direct research ties to the Israeli Ministry of Defense," he said.
Protesters also sat in the middle of Massachusetts Avenue, blocking the street during rush hour in the Boston area.
The demonstrations at Columbia have roiled its campus and officials said Monday that while it won't hold it's main ceremony, students will be able to celebrate at a series of smaller, school-based ceremonies this week and next.
The decision comes as universities around the country wrangle with how to handle commencements for students whose high school graduations were derailed by COVID-19 in 2020. Another campus shaken by protests, Emory University, announced Monday that it would move its commencement from its Atlanta campus to a suburban arena. Others, including the University of Michigan, Indiana University and Northeastern, have pulled off ceremonies with few disruptions.
Columbia's decision to cancel its main ceremonies scheduled for May 15 saves its president, Minouche Shafik, from having to deliver a commencement address in the same part of campus where police dismantled a protest encampment last week. The Ivy League school in upper Manhattan said it made the decision after discussions with students.
"Our students emphasized that these smaller-scale, school-based celebrations are most meaningful to them and their families," officials said.
Most of the ceremonies that had been scheduled for the south lawn of the main campus, where encampments were taken down last week, will take place about 8 kilometers (5 miles) north at Columbia's sports complex, officials said.
Speakers at some of Columbia's still-scheduled graduation ceremonies include Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames and Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, director of the National Institutes of Health.
Columbia had already canceled in-person classes. More than 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia's green or occupied an academic building were arrested in recent weeks.
Similar encampments sprouted up elsewhere as universities struggled with where to draw the line between allowing free expression while maintaining safe and inclusive campuses.
The University of Southern California earlier canceled its main graduation ceremony. Students abandoned their camp at USC on Sunday after being surrounded by police and threatened with arrest.
Other universities have held graduation ceremonies with beefed-up security. The University of Michigan's ceremony was interrupted by chanting a few times Saturday. In Boston on Sunday, some students waved small Palestinian or Israeli flags at Northeastern University's commencement in Fenway Park.
Emory's ceremonies scheduled for May 13 will be held at the GasSouth Arena and Convocation Center in Duluth, almost 20 miles (30 kilometers) northeast of the university's Atlanta campus, President Gregory Fenves said in an open letter.
"Please know that this decision was not taken lightly," Fenves wrote. "It was made in close consultation with the Emory Police Department, security advisors and other agencies — each of which advised against holding commencement events on our campuses."
The 16,000-student university is one of many that has seen repeated protests stemming from the conflict that started Oct. 7 when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking roughly 250 hostages. Student protesters are calling on their schools to divest from companies that do business with Israel or otherwise contribute to the war effort.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 34,500 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. Israeli strikes have devastated the enclave and displaced most of its inhabitants.
Hamas on Monday announced its acceptance of an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal, but Israel said the deal did not meet its "core demands" and that it was pushing ahead with an assault on the southern Gaza town of Rafah.
"Cease-fires are temporary," said Selina Al-Shihabi, a Georgetown University sophomore who was taking part in a protest at George Washington. "There can be a cease-fire, but the U.S. government will continue to arm the Israeli military. We plan to be here until the university divests or until they drag us out of here."
At the University of California, San Diego, police cleared an encampment and arrested more than 64 people, including 40 students.
The University of California, Los Angeles, moved all classes online for the entire week due to ongoing disruptions following the dismantling of an encampment last week. The university police force reported 44 arrests but there were no specific details, UCLA spokesperson Eddie North-Hager said in an email to The Associated Press.
Schools are trying various tactics from appeasement to threats of disciplinary action to get protestors to take down encampments or move to campus areas where demonstrations would be less intrusive.
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago said in a Facebook post Sunday that it offered protesters "amnesty from academic sanction and trespassing charges" if they moved.
"Many protesters left the premises of their own accord after being notified by the police that they were trespassing and subject to arrest," the school said. "Those that remained were arrested after multiple warnings to leave, including some of whom we recognized as SAIC students."
A group of faculty and staff members at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill asked the administration for amnesty for any students who were arrested and suspended during recent protests. UNC Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine said in a media advisory that it would deliver a letter on behalf of more than 500 faculty who support the student activists.
Other universities took a different approach.
Harvard University's interim president, Alan Garber, warned students that those participating in a pro-Palestinian encampment in Harvard Yard could face "involuntary leave." That means they would not be allowed on campus, could lose their student housing and may not be able to take exams, Garber said.
Columbia University cancels main commencement after protests that roiled campus for weeks
Columbia University is canceling its large university-wide commencement ceremony amid ongoing pro-Palestinian protests but will hold smaller school-based ceremonies this week and next, the university announced Monday.
"Based on feedback from our students, we have decided to focus attention on our Class Days and school-level graduation ceremonies, where students are honored individually alongside their peers, and to forego the university-wide ceremony that is scheduled for May 15," Columbia officials said in a statement.
The protests stem from the conflict that started Oct. 7 when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 34,500 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. Israeli strikes have devastated the enclave and displaced most of its inhabitants.
The University of Southern California earlier canceled its main graduation ceremony while allowing other commencement activities to continue.
- By VOA News
Where Are Pro-Palestinian Campus Protests Happening?
Colleges in the U.S. have been rocked by a wave of campus protests calling for an end to the war in Gaza, and for U.S. colleges to divest from Israel.
The Wall Street Journal’s Steven Russolillo rounds up some of the most important ones. (April 2024)
