With the death of the youngest United States' victim as confirmed by California Governor Gavin Newsom, the Los Angeles County health department reminded the public that COVID-19 does not discriminate by race, income level, and especially age.
Having the most number of victims in the US, New York has not reported the ages of most victims making the death of a minor from Lancaster, California in Los Angeles County the first known incident of a minor dying from COVID-19.
After the loss of a young life, Gov. Newsom warned everyone to take the pandemic seriously as he pointed out that half of the 2,102 COVID-19 positive California citizens are between the ages of 18 up to 49.
On Tuesday's report of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, they raised the number of COVID-19 related deaths to 11 in the area including the death of the teenager.
Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris shared that the minor did not have pre-existing health conditions until he exhibited acute respiratory problems and tested late, thus the test results came out after his death causing initial confusion if he indeed died with COVID-19.
Ordering the children in Lancaster to stay at home, The 68-year-old Mayor Parris enforced the law in Lancaster to avoid losing another child as he initially thought that the disease can only affect people of his age.
Moreover, there was an addition of two people between the ages of 50 and 70 who also died with one of them having an underlying health condition.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showed that on nearly 2,500 of the first recorded cases in the United States, while older people have a high risk of dying, younger adults had a significant portion of hospitalizations due to coronavirus as well.
12- year-old in Altanta tests positive for COVID-19
Higher risk also appears on children, the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta isolates a 12-year-old girl who tested positive with COVID, officials placed her on a ventilator to stabilized her condition.
While the girl's family hopes for her fast recovery, the Girl's cousin Justin Anthony posted on social media that everyone should think again if kids cannot get COVID-19 for her cousin did not have any underlying health issue and she just initially diagnosed with pneumonia.
People who have undergone cancer treatments are vulnerable to respiratory infections, just like the case of the 34-year old cancer survivor Jeffrey Grazarian who died from COVID-19 in Los Angeles after surviving prostate cancer several years ago.
Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, Stephen S. Moore discussed that there was not still enough data on what is the effect the pandemic could cause to the youth and he sighted that even in the ordinary flu some young people could get very sick or die.
