What Parents Need To Know About Long Covid In Children

Alison Escalante Contributor
Science

The Delta variant of COVID-19 has changed the game when it comes to kids. Significantly more contagious than original COVID, it is filling pediatric hospitals with sick children. Meanwhile, it’s become increasingly clear that even kids with mild illness may not be getting through COVID unscathed. It turns out that children are getting the long COVID syndrome that had initially thought to be only a problem in adults.

Parents need to know what to do about long COVID in kids, and it starts with masks and vaccines.
Long COVID

According to an article by Helen Thomson in New Science, “Symptoms of long covid were first thought to include fatigue, muscle and joint pain, headache, insomnia, respiratory problems and heart palpitations. Now, support groups and researchers say there may be up to 100 other symptoms, including gastrointestinal problems, nausea, dizziness, seizures, hallucinations and testicular pain.”

And long COVID is not unique to people who got more seriously ill during their infection. In fact, long COVID happens regularly in people who had mild cases of COVID-19 initially, both in children and adults.

In my own clinical practice, many of my patients’ parents have shared their Long COVID symptoms with me. “My chest still hurts all the time,” said one mother, a healthcare worker who felt lucky to have survived her case of COVID three months prior. Others can’t smell or have developed phantosmia, and can smell only unpleasant odors like feces more than six months after COVID. But the most common complaints I hear are brain fog and fatigue.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisonescalante/2021/08/17/what-parents-need-to-know-about-long-covid-in-children/?sh=4a31b4a08ec5