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The coronavirus may be best known for the brutal toll it has taken on older adults, but a new study of hospital patients challenges the notion that young people are impervious. The research letter from Harvard found that among 3,222 young adults hospitalized with Covid-19, 88 died — about 2.7 percent. One in five required intensive care, and one in 10 needed a ventilator to assist with breathing. (9/10)

Cases of COVID-19 are “increasingly rapidly among young adults in the U.S.,” according to a research letter from Harvard, published at the online site of the JAMA medical journal. The study included 3,222 young adults between the ages of 18 and 34. The investigation found that the young adults “experienced substantial rates of adverse outcomes: 21% required intensive care, 10% required mechanical ventilation, and 2.7% died.” (9/11)

While this in-hospital mortality rate was less than reported figures for older coronavirus patients, it doubled the death rate for young adults with acute myocardial infarction or heart attacks. "Given the sharply rising rates of COVID-19 infection in young adults, these findings underscore the importance of infection prevention measures in this age group," study authors wrote. (Rivas, 9/10)

COVID-19 can be made more serious — and, in some cases, more deadly — by a specific type of industrial emission called hazardous air pollutants, or HAPs, according to new peer-reviewed research by ProPublica and researchers at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. The study, published Friday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found this association in both rural counties in Louisiana and highly populated communities in New York. The analysis examined air pollution and coronavirus deaths in the roughly 3,100 U.S. counties and found a close correlation between levels of hazardous pollutants and the per-capita death rate from COVID-19. (Younes and Sneath, 9/11)

As many as 1 in 100 hospitalized COVID-19 patients may experience a pneumothorax, or punctured lung, according to a multicenter observational case series published yesterday in the European Respiratory Journal. Pneumothorax usually occurs in very tall young men or older patients with serious underlying lung disease. But University of Cambridge researchers identified COVID-19 patients with neither of those traits who had a punctured lung or pneumomediastinum (air or gas leakage from a lung into the area between the lungs) from March to June at 16 UK hospitals. (Van Beusekom, 9/10)

U.S. researchers are beginning two clinical trials examining the use of blood thinners to treat COVID-19, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced Thursday. One study will focus on people who were hospitalized for COVID-19 and the other will focus on those who were infected, but not hospitalized. (Moreno, 9/10)