Doctor: More middle-aged people get severe cases of COVID-19

RICHMOND, Indiana — A local doctor said more middle-aged people are ending up with severe cases of COVID-19, and there are some factors that put people in the 30 to 60 age group at a much higher risk.

What was once a deadly disease to the elderly is now becoming more deadly to the middle-aged. People who are 65 and older have a vaccine rate in Ohio of more than 80%, but as you lower the age, the rates go down.

Dr. Thomas Huth with Reid Health said, “What we’re seeing in hospitals now are younger people, people in the middle age of the last three months, that’s all we’ve had in my hospital.”

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Huth said there’s no doubt high vaccine rates have contributed to lower hospitalizations and deaths. But, for this middle-age group. Where vaccine rates in Ohio vary from 47% to 62% - Dr. Huth said that’s who is suffering from severe cases of COVID now.

“They tend to be vaccine resistant people, they haven’t gotten their shots because of that.,” Huth said.

He continues by saying that not every middle-aged person who is unvaccinated who contracts the virus will have a severe case, but people who are overweight and have diabetes are at a much higher risk.

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Huth said, “That combination of high BMI and diabetes seems to be high risk now. Those are the people who really need to be vaccinated.”

With vaccine makers already looking toward booster shots, Huth said those vaccine doses should be going to the unvaccinated. But, gaining the trust of those who are resistant is the hardest part.

Huth said, “The problem is people distrust authority because they haven’t been right every tie and it’s engrained in the American way of thinking that you have to show me you’re worthy of my trust and a lot of people don’t have that level of trust.”

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