![]() Gemma, from Texas, whose 9-year-old son is currently in inpatient rehabilitation for long COVID, told us about her child’s difficult and ongoing journey in the search for effective care for his persistent symptoms. The parents of children and adolescents with long COVID that MNT spoke to also emphasized, at length, that doctors need to be better informed about the disease in children, and that there is an urgent need for better specialized care. Nine-year-old ‘went from running, to using a walker, to a wheelchair’ “We have an urgent need for research into post-COVID syndromes and persistent symptoms in children, because they’re at the beginning of their lives, they’ve had a really tough year, and they deserve to be put first.” Whittaker notes that, while “children experience less severe disease than adults,” it is “crucial to support recovery for those who do experience significant disease,” such as long COVID and PIMS. She cites data from the Long Covid Kids study - an independent research endeavor spearheaded by the Long Covid Kids advocacy group - which indicate that, in children, long COVID symptoms can include: outlines the wide array of symptoms children with long COVID can experience. Elizabeth Whittaker - senior clinical lecturer in pediatric infectious diseases and immunology at Imperial College London in the U.K. Of these, 52.7% reported experiencing at least one symptom of COVID-19 at 120 days (approximately 4 months) or more after the initial diagnosis. The study - as yet unpublished and not peer reviewed, shared on the preprint platform medRxiv - analyzed the health data of a cohort of 129 children diagnosed with COVID-19 between March and November 2020 in Italy. Gemelli IRCCS in Rome, Italy, also suggests that long COVID may be more common in children than public health experts had expected. The most detailed sets of data, for the time being, have been collected by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in the United Kingdom.Īccording to updated experimental estimates published by the ONS in January 2021, around 12.9% of children aged 2–11 years, 14.5% of those aged 12–16 years, and 17.1% of teenagers and young adults aged 17–24 years still had COVID-19 symptoms at 5 weeks after the initial onset.Ī study headed by researchers from the Department of Woman and Child Health and Public Health at the Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. There are limited comprehensive data about children with long-lasting symptoms of COVID-19, so it can be difficult to say just how common this phenomenon is among the under 18s. Morrow and Malone offered MNT joint comments about long COVID in children. Malone is also an assistant professor of Neurology and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.ĭrs. Morrow is an assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Laura Malone, neurologist - both from the Kennedy Krieger Institute, a Johns Hopkins affiliate in Baltimore, MD.ĭr. Amanda Morrow, rehabilitation physician, and Dr. These parents spoke to us about the difficult journey towards securing an accurate diagnosis, and the often fruitless search for formal support.įor an informed medical perspective on long COVID, MNT sought the expertise of Dr. In this Special Feature, we present, at length, the stories of four parents whose children still experience debilitating symptoms. To answer this and many other questions, Medical News Today spoke to the parents of children and teens with long COVID. How do ongoing symptoms of COVID-19 actually impact the day-to-day lives and well-being of the children and adolescents who experience them? Yet some children experience ongoing symptoms weeks or even months after their initial illness - a phenomenon commonly referred to as “long COVID.” In most cases of COVID-19 in children, symptoms should typically improve and then disappear altogether after a couple of weeks from symptom onset. ![]() ![]() However, in some extreme cases, they may develop multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) or pediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome (PIMS), as some experts refer to it.Īccording to existing data, MIS-C/PIMS can become apparent at 2–6 weeks after a SARS-CoV-2 infection, and some of the symptoms that can accompany it include: Reports indicate that, in most cases, children who contract the new coronavirus develop mild-to-moderate symptoms or remain asymptomatic. Some studies have argued that children have a lower risk of developing severe COVID-19 - the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 - than adults.
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