Tweet
June 10, 2021
By Elizabeth Cooney
... Kate’s story makes clear that long Covid is not an adults-only phenomenon. Numbers are hard to come by, but more children and adolescents are experiencing chronic symptoms after Covid even as the pandemic ebbs in the U.S., say doctors at the few clinics devoted to caring for them. Although the disease has played out in ways that differ between adults and children, long Covid is posing the same mystery in kids as in adults.
“I don’t think we have a good understanding at all about the pathophysiology behind post-Covid syndrome,” said Alicia Johnston, one of Kate’s doctors and head of the Boston Children’s Hospital long Covid clinic. “And I’m not sure that the pathophysiology is going to be the same in post-Covid syndrome in adults compared to post-Covid syndrome in children.”
... In adults, studies peg the proportion who experience prolonged difficulties at 1 in 3 Covid patients, but there is a vanishingly small set of numbers about children. Experts told STAT they’ve all looked at one research paper from Rome that studied 129 patients from 2 to 18 years old, as well as data on about 9,000 children and adolescents from the U.K.’s health system. From that small base, they surmise a plausible range from 7% to 20%. In the U.S., nearly 4 million children and adolescents under 18 have tested positive for Covid.
By Elizabeth Cooney
... Kate’s story makes clear that long Covid is not an adults-only phenomenon. Numbers are hard to come by, but more children and adolescents are experiencing chronic symptoms after Covid even as the pandemic ebbs in the U.S., say doctors at the few clinics devoted to caring for them. Although the disease has played out in ways that differ between adults and children, long Covid is posing the same mystery in kids as in adults.
“I don’t think we have a good understanding at all about the pathophysiology behind post-Covid syndrome,” said Alicia Johnston, one of Kate’s doctors and head of the Boston Children’s Hospital long Covid clinic. “And I’m not sure that the pathophysiology is going to be the same in post-Covid syndrome in adults compared to post-Covid syndrome in children.”
... In adults, studies peg the proportion who experience prolonged difficulties at 1 in 3 Covid patients, but there is a vanishingly small set of numbers about children. Experts told STAT they’ve all looked at one research paper from Rome that studied 129 patients from 2 to 18 years old, as well as data on about 9,000 children and adolescents from the U.K.’s health system. From that small base, they surmise a plausible range from 7% to 20%. In the U.S., nearly 4 million children and adolescents under 18 have tested positive for Covid.