@ NYTimes Coronavirus Live Updates, 18 minutes ago

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.

Among those who survived, 99 patients, or 3 percent, could not be sent home from the hospital and were transferred to facilities for ongoing care or rehabilitation.

The study “establishes that Covid-19 is a life-threatening disease in people of all ages,” wrote Dr. Mitchell Katz, a deputy editor at JAMA Internal Medicine, in an accompanying editorial.b“Social distancing, facial coverings and other approaches to prevent transmission are as important in young adults as in older people,” it said.

Nearly 60 percent of younger patients hospitalized with Covid-19 were men, and a similar percentage were Black or Hispanic. Men were more likely to need a ventilator than women, and more likely to die. Extreme obesity and hypertension were also linked to a greater risk of mechanical ventilation or death.

The study, which was peer reviewed and published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Wednesday, looked at young adults discharged from more than 400 hospitals in the United States between April 1 and June 30. Over all, just over one-third were obese, and one quarter extremely so. Roughly one in five had diabetes, and about one in seven had hypertension. [....]