Great Britain - The Kingdom is no longer an exception. Ismail dies, victim at 13 years

Having left a few weeks behind continental Europe, the United Kingdom continues for now to sadly recover positions on the path of coronavirus infections. Not without the inevitable grave goods, with names and surnames. Many seniors, as everywhere, but not only: in recent days the most cruel fate has been touched among the victims of London by an Italian, Luca Di Nicola, 19-year-old chef from Nereto, in Abruzzo, whose end has left many questions open in the family members on British health care; in the last few hours it was then the turn of a 13-year-old, the youngest of the Covid-19 casualties in the country. His name was Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab, and he was a son of New Britain. Born in Brixton, a popular district in south London where David Bowie grew up, he died yesterday at King's College Hospital, killed by the virus in a matter of hours. Like Luca, he had no previous health problems. "At least not that we knew," murmured the parents, "destroyed beyond words." Ismail felt bad on Sunday, with breathing difficulties. Hospitalized after a few hours, he was intubated, subjected to the assistance of a fan and then to induced coma. But he did not make it: Monday expired, isolated and alone.

Yet another confirmation that the Covid-19, in acute form, does not give anyone any discounts. Although in the British count of global data available, only 0.3% of those affected end up in hospital. Young people and especially the very young - confirm some specialists - are statistically less subject to contagion and in large part do not risk their lives even when infected. But there is no lack of tragic "anomalies", Nathalie MacDermott, a researcher at King's College London, points out to the BBC, noting that the exact causes of Ismail's death should be established by a coroner, but above all warning that the case remains a warning "on the importance that everyone follow possible precautions to limit the spread of the epidemic. " "Statistics - echoes Vanessa Sancho-Shimizu, virologist at Imperial College - are always subject to exceptions, however rare they are. And it doesn't matter when a 13-year-old boy or someone close to us is hit: the truth is that there is no room for the slightest underestimation of this pandemic. "