Home » Health » Public health concerned about growing COVID cases among young people [VIDÉO] | COVID-19 | News | The Voice of the East

Public health concerned about growing COVID cases among young people [VIDÉO] | COVID-19 | News | The Voice of the East

Lhe director of public health of the Montérégie, Dr. Julie Loslier, shared her concerns with her boss, Dr. Horacio Arruda, Friday, while the latter was continuing his provincial tour.

“We observe a decrease in the average age of our cases and certain phenomena, situations where we had cases in younger people who generated a very large number of contacts because there were social situations without social distancing, ”she revealed.

This resumption of reckless socialization seems fairly widespread, according to her.

“One of the things we noticed in Montérégie and it was true in the other regions is that the number of contacts in each case increased. We see that people are less respectful of distancing measures. ”

And one of the signs of this recklessness is revealed in another statistic, added Dr. Loslier: “We have seen an increase in our rates of sexually transmitted infections in recent weeks”, a clear indication of the absence of distancing. ‘it is.

The mask: “make it cool”

Doctor Arruda confirmed these statements while taking care to underline how the young people had been exemplary during the complete confinement.

“I want to congratulate them,” he said at the outset. Noting the effect of campaigns by influencers, stars and models of all kinds, the director of public health said he believed that “he we’re going to have to come back to this kind of approach with them so that they become aware ”.

“They were locked up. Young people need to socialize, This is important; the confinement had perverse effects ”, he recognized at the same time. He underlined that young people “are less affected and, if they are sick, they will have fewer complications”, which undoubtedly partly explains a certain carelessness, but he recalled that they also risk becoming transmitters COVID-19 to adults around them.

While acknowledging that coercive approaches with young people can have the opposite effect, he said he wanted to “appeal to their civic and social sense. We have to create a social climate, a standard where it will become part of the label ”.

“We will try to make it cool for young people to wear a mask,” said Doctor Arruda.

Prepare for the second wave

While the deaths and confirmed case numbers of COVID-19 have remained rather low for a few weeks, public health is already preparing for a possible second wave of contamination, but Horacio Arruda insisted that the virus is still present.

Despite declining numbers, he reported a new outbreak in the Laurentians, but said it was well controlled.

“We have a responsibility to prepare (for a second wave),” he added, noting that his team has been working actively to do this for the past few weeks.

Health officials are now more aware of the epidemiological characteristics of the virus, including the fact that asymptomatic carriers can transmit it while affected children are weak transmitters and usually have few symptoms.

The lessons learned during the first wave of COVID-19, which is not yet over, will be useful when the time comes to tackle the second wave, says Arruda.

Curiously, he remains fairly confident to see the virus express a certain seasonality, even if it is growing rapidly in the southern United States. At the same time, he admits that this virus has its share of surprises and has not finished surprising the medical community. He also hopes that all the preventive measures – hand washing, physical distancing and wearing a mask – will have a beneficial side effect: slowing the progression of influenza and other respiratory viruses in the fall.

+

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.