Half of the intensive care corona patients are under 65 years of age

Statistics from both Sweden and internationally show that those who die from coronary disease are usually old people. Worst of all, it looks to the elderly with other underlying illnesses. But when it comes to the need for intensive care, the distribution in age is more unclear. In Sweden, so far half of those who have been in intensive care have been of active age, below 65 years. This is evidenced by figures from the Swedish Intensive Care Register SIR that SVT has produced.

There are very few cases so far that require intensive care in Sweden, but only in the last week has the number of unique patients gone from 20 to 55.

It is still too small a number to draw strong scientific or statistical conclusions.

- We see that both the middle age and the median age are 62 years. So we have slightly younger patients than what we have seen in Italy, for example, says anesthesiologist Johnny Hillgren, chairman of the intensive care registry.

When the Public Health Authority at Thursday's press conference asked questions about a 27-year-old who was cared for in the intensive state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said the case was very "odd". He then said that "almost everyone who dies or who needs intensive care is over 80 to 90 years".

This gives a completely different picture than the statistics so far in the intensive care register for the Swedish cases. According to the register, there have been 9 patients between 20 and 49 years, 20 patients between 50 and 65 years, 20 between 66 and 79 years and only 6 people aged 80 years or more.

Director General, Johan Carlsson, was the one from the Public Health Authority who answered the media's questions today. He did not want to comment if he supported Anders Tegnell's statement, but he thinks they have been clear with the facts.

"There are also large groups of people in the age group under 65, and the figures can be estimated by how many people have been exposed to the infection, but for young healthy people the risk is relatively small," he says.

Also in the US, fresh figures show that 47 percent of those who have been intensive care have been people under 65. In the Netherlands, half of those in intensive care have been under 50 years.

According to state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, the figure in the intensive care register is not able to draw conclusions.

- In the long term, it will definitely not be half of the intensive care patients who are under 65, he says.

Is there a possibility, then, that the authority has toned down the risk of people of active age becoming seriously ill?

Anders Tegnell stands for what he said at the press conference regarding the risk of death, he says - but he does not say the same about how many people aged 65 who may need intensive care.

How big is he, then, that the risk is for 40, 50, 60-year-olds in Sweden to end up intensive if they become ill?

"We don't know that today," Anders Tegnell replies.