Statistics show that more young people get COVID-19 but more older people die from the disease. Data from 55 countries showed people 65 and older represented just 12% of confirmed cases but accounted for 66% of deaths. Younger individuals under the age of 44 accounted for 60% of COVID-19 cases but only 7% of deaths.

"Young people get the virus and don't die, but they are the ones spreading it to old people. This is true all over the world," said Mun Sim Lai, an officer with the United Nations who has been studying the trend.

According to The Wall Street Journal, while the actual number of younger people dying from the disease is low, the mortality rate in this age group has increased 25% this year over the past five years.

"Even though it's a relatively small number of deaths, it’s a big impact," said Dr. Robert Anderson, chief of mortality statistics with the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which supplied the data. "It's an additional fourth of what's normal."

While death rates increased for all age groups since the pandemic, Anderson noted that while not all the fatalities were directly caused by COVID-19, the pandemic may have played an indirect role. Increased stress, substance abuse, strokes, and hypertension are some potentially deadly conditions that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.

"There's a good hypothesis that it's from COVID, but you have to take into account if there is an increase of other things young people die of, like overdoses and accidents," Amira Roess, Ph.D., a professor of global health and epidemiology at George Mason University, told the Journal.

And experts point out that while the elderly are more likely to die from the coronavirus than young people, they also account for more deaths across the board. For example, according to the Journal, the CDC states that 30% Americans who are over 85 years of age account for all deaths, while 31% account for COVID-19 deaths. The percentages are similar in other age categories of older Americans.

What concerns experts most is that young people are playing a dangerous role in transmitting the virus to an older, more susceptible population.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has pleaded with young Americans to take responsibility and follow safety guidelines so that they do not spread the disease to vulnerable people. According to Fox News, Fauci warned them that "a risk for you is not just isolated for you. You are innocently and inadvertently propagating the process of a pandemic."

Anderson added, according to the Journal: "The fact is these younger folks don't live in a bubble. They're interacting with older folks. Even if they are not at risk of dying, they're at risk of infecting someone who is at risk of dying."