The Belgian emergency doctor Ignace Demeyer told his story in Terzake, the daily Flemish news program of the VRT. “Contrary to what everyone always thought would be older people or people with underlying problems such as heart failure or kidney failure, we now see that people with a blank medical history are seriously ill,” he says. It concerns people between 30 and 50 years old who come to him.
“The people we receive come in with the same complaints,” says Demeyer. “They have been sick for a week, have had the flu and have stayed at home. The flu attack is over, they think, they felt fine for two days.”
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Demeyer: “Later they report to us with complaints of a dry cough cough. A bit short of breath. When the oxygen saturation is measured (the level of oxygen in the blood, ed.) And then we see that for their age that is very low These are alarms that we see from abroad, from Italy and China, these are problem patients in the making. But people don’t realize they have been affected by the virus. “
Yesterday, chairman Diederik Gommers of the Dutch Association for Intensive Care (NVIC) also told RTL Nieuws that the majority of people who are on a Dutch IC are under 50 years of age.
Defense system
Gommers says that in the critically ill patients the inflammation has gotten so out of hand that the body is too exhausted to breathe independently. “We don’t know exactly why. It has something to do with their immune system that goes too far.”
In the broadcast of Terzake, the Flemish emergency doctor shows CT scans of lungs, which were made the day before yesterday.
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The left photo shows the lungs of a healthy person. “In the middle photo, in the two blue circles, are alveoli that are 20 to 25 percent filled with inflammatory fluid.”
In the right photo, you see alveoli that are 80 to 90 percent filled with inflammatory fluid, Demeyer says. “That’s a mass that’s forming a scar.”
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Whether they can still heal? “Obviously they can heal, but they are in a life-threatening situation. These are the lungs of sporty, young people. These are not smokers, not people with diabetes, not people with heart failure.”
NVIC chairman Diederik Gommers says he also recognizes these lung scans. “Yes, those pictures are the same with us and that fits with the diagnosis of ARDS, a serious lung disease that arises from double-sided pneumonia.
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80 percent have hardly any complaints
Sjaak de Gouw, national spokesperson for infectious disease control of the GGD GHOR Nederland, previously told RTL Nieuws that most young people who become infected have hardly any complaints. “The youthful cells are better able to process this virus. They often have no or sometimes mild complaints. So most young people will not even notice that they are sick if they are infected with the virus.”
Statistically, more than 80 percent of all people who become infected in the Netherlands will have mild complaints and will be free of complaints again within three days. “That percentage is even higher among young people,” says De Gouw. In addition, about 95 percent get mild complaints and are better within three days.
But then there is still five percent. “There may be individual situations where someone gets more serious complaints, but there aren’t many.”
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In intensive care, these patients are mechanically ventilated through a tube in the windpipe. “They don’t get any of that. Just like during an operation, the patients are put into a deep sleep.”
The respiration, lying on the stomach and sometimes with extra support for blood pressure, gives the body the chance to recover. “It is important to slowly decrease the ventilator before the patient wakes up and can breathe independently again.”
Four weeks
Experience from severely affected countries such as China and Italy shows that the ventilation period lasts at least four weeks. “It differs per patient. The rehabilitation afterwards is a very long process from six months to a year. And don’t expect that you can start working immediately afterwards.”
According to virologist Marion Koopmans of Erasmus MC, yesterday also confirmed that serious infections can develop in young people. “But there are a lot of people with hardly any complaints.”
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