Cases of children with long haul symptoms are rare but growing.

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Fri, 2021-03-19 11:51 — mike kraft

These children had covid-19. Now, they have long-haul symptoms. Some children who were infected with the coronavirus last spring or summer are still feeling its effects. Ariana Eunjung Cha Washington Post

... Cases of children with persistent symptoms after covid-19 are rare but growing, doctors say, unnerving parents and physicians who are tracking the often strange and fluctuating constellation of symptoms. On Facebook support groups and other social media, families describe their struggles to be taken seriously and express frustration that basic scientific knowledge is lacking about what is going on.

Many of the children who suffer from enduring effects report they continue to feel lousy — even though they have cleared the virus, are not suffering from obvious organ damage, and their scans, bloodwork and other tests come back clean.

Public health officials and scientists often talk about how children have been largely spared from the devastation of covid-19. But their story is incomplete without understanding “long-haulers.”

Nearly 3.17 million U.S. children have tested positive for the virus. Few have been hospitalized and even fewer have died, but some children — whether they had mild or severe cases, or no symptoms at all — are developing problems that last for weeks or months after their initial infection. According to surveys and studies of small groups of children, the symptoms include fatigue, headache and heart palpitations.

In the early months of the pandemic, when many children sheltered at home, the phenomenon of long covid appeared to be limited to adults. But as schools, sports and other activities started up, it has become clear children are vulnerable, too.

The World Health Organization has recognized that covid-19 “can sometimes result in prolonged illness, even in young adults and children without underlying chronic medical conditions,” but efforts to characterize the illness so far have relied mostly on phone surveys, case studies and anecdotal evidence.

A growing number of medical centers — Boston Children’s Hospital, Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, National Jewish Health in Denver and Norton Children’s Hospital in Louisville — are setting up multidisciplinary clinics to try to better understand and treat these patients. And a research project funded by the National Institutes of Health that is getting underway will explore the range of impacts covid-19 has had on children. ...

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