Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/Q050l99K4QI

 

One in every four children under the age of 18 develops symptoms of long CoVid following a given CoVid infection.  An international collaborative group that includes Harvard, Emory, Cornell, Rutgers, Swedish and Mexican universities performed a meta-analysis of  21 published studies covering some 80,071 children and adolescents 0 to 18 years of age.

 

The crunched numbers reveal that 25.4% of all children diagnosed with CoVid developed one or more symptoms of long CoVid lasting 4 weeks or longer.  For those who required hospitalization, the prevalence was higher at 29.2%.  Children with long CoVid had multiple symptoms, and the most common were anxiety and depression in 16.5%, sleep disorders in 8.4%, persistent headache in 7.8%, breathing problems in 7.6%, excess chest and nasal mucus in 7.5%, thinking problems in 6.2%, loss of appetite in 6%, exercise intolerance in 5.7%, and smell and taste issues in 5.6%.  Compared with uninfected children, those who contracted CoVid were 2.7 times more likely to have shortness of breath, 10.6 times more likely to have smell and taste problems, and 2.2 times more likely to suffer persistent fevers.

 

With CoVid Omicron now driving substantial numbers of infants, children, and teens to the hospital, in part because far too many are unvaccinated and if vaccinated unboosted, it’s too soon to be dropping indoor masking and avoidance of crowds, especially indoors.  The latest Omicron subvariant, BA.2, is nearly as contagious as the measles, but the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines plus boosters will keep those children eligible to get them from the tragedy of long CoVid. 

 

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.10.22272237v1.full.pdf+html

 

#CoVid #longcovid #children #adolescents #infants