![]() ![]() An acute covid infection is rarely life-threatening to children, although a significant number of children have died-over 1,000 in the US alone. Part of what makes defining long covid difficult is that it appears to take many forms. “Everyone has a different opinion,” says Mcfarland. Others might send children for basic blood tests and scans that come back clear, and discharge them. Having heard from other parents of children with long covid, Mcfarland says her daughter’s experience “is far from unique.” Primary care doctors don’t agree on what long covid in children is, and some don’t believe it is a syndrome at all. Both Mcfarland and her 16-year-old daughter have long covid, and they have been told that her daughter’s symptoms are “all in her head,” she says. That’s a small number.”īut many children might not make it to one of the specialized long covid clinics, says Sammie Mcfarland, founder of the campaign group and nonprofit Long Covid Kids. “We’ve seen 90 since the beginning of July. “We’ve set up post-covid clinics across London, which covers a big, big area,” he says. ![]() London-based pediatrician Michael Absoud says the figure can’t be as high as even 7%, because he just hasn’t seen enough children with suspected long covid. "The point is that the pandemic has been terrible for children" Emma Duncan at King's College London Stephenson thinks the figure is around 7%. “Statistically, you will not find a signal, because the signal has been massively diluted,” Gurdasani says. Based on the data she’s seen, Gurdasani believes that long covid affects somewhere between 10% and 20% of children who contract the virus, which includes those who don’t develop covid-19 symptoms. Very few studies have looked at the impact of social changes like school shutdowns, says Forrest.īecause many people experience headaches and tiredness-the most common symptoms identified in the ZOE study-on a regular basis, it’s hard to draw conclusions about long covid, says Deepti Gurdasani, a clinical epidemiologist and statistical geneticist at Queen Mary University of London. Doctors are seeing more children with eating disorders and tics, as well as an increase in symptoms of depression and anxiety. Pediatricians describe a significant uptick in the numbers of children being referred to mental health care services. Once the children who had asymptomatic infections, who wouldn’t have taken a test at all, are factored in, the percentage of infected children who develop long covid is likely to be significantly lower than even 2%, says Duncan. Just under 2% of children still had symptoms 56 days after the start of their illness. The children tended to get better with time, says Emma Duncan, an endocrinologist at King’s College London who co-authored the ZOE study. ![]() Reports by parents on behalf of 1,734 children found that just 4% of infected children still had symptoms 28 days after the start of their illness. Health science company ZOE and King’s College London launched the COVID Symptom Study app in March 2020 and have since collected daily symptom reports from hundreds of thousands of contributors. Ladhani also points to data collected from smartphone app users. Study co-author Shamez Ladhani, pediatrician and epidemiologist at Public Health England, says the findings should reassure parents that long covid is very unlikely to affect their children. What does this tell us? It depends on whom you ask. ![]()
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