Can children also get long covid?
Long Covid (also: post-Covid) is the term used by doctors to describe various symptom complexes that can occur after a Covid-19 infection. This also applies to infected children and adolescents. Long Covid not only develops after severe courses, it also often affects people who were originally only mildly ill – which is the rule in children and adolescents.
The symptoms can develop during the infection, immediately after the infection or after a delay of a few weeks. Sometimes they disappear after a few weeks. However, they can also persist for months.
How does Long Covid manifest itself in children?
Some symptoms that are common in adults are rare in children and adolescents with Long Covid – and vice versa. Lung complaints, for example, which plague many adult Long Covid patients, are rare in children.
Children and adolescents mainly show the following Long Covid symptoms (in descending order):
- Exhaustion, tiredness and fatigue
- Cough
- Sore throat and chest pain
- Psychological abnormalities such as depression, adjustment or anxiety disorders
- General feeling of illness (somatic stress disorders)
- Headache and abdominal pain
- Feverish reactions
What is the likelihood of Long Covid in children?
In a large-scale observational study conducted by six major health insurance companies, around 12,000 children and adolescents between the ages of 0 and 17 who tested positive were later tested for post-Covid-19 symptoms. The researchers later identified post-Covid symptoms in 437 of them. This corresponds to 3.6 percent of the infected children and adolescents in this study. Their risk of cough, sore throat and chest pain as well as headaches and feverish reactions as late effects were also increased by around a third.
However, these were all children and adolescents who had been tested for Sars-CoV-2 due to various acute symptoms.
In children who may have had an inconspicuous course of infection and only developed secondary symptoms such as headaches later on, the connection may be overlooked. It is therefore difficult to estimate the possible number of unreported cases of Long Covid in children and adolescents from this observational study.
How is long covid treated in children?
Long Covid syndrome has many different causes. They range from persistent inflammatory processes in the body to possible organ damage in severe cases. In addition, the underlying disease mechanisms of many post-Covid symptoms remain unclear. As a result, they are less amenable to targeted treatment.
Whether child or adult: Long Covid manifests itself in very different ways. A treatment plan must therefore be developed individually for each patient based on their symptoms.
Possible measures are
- Stress reduction and relaxation measures
- Training of cognitive performance
- Support for behavioral adaptation (e.g. neither excessive demands nor avoidance of activities)
- pain therapy
- Psychotherapeutic or psychopharmacological treatment
- Physiotherapy and occupational therapy neuropsychological measures
- Supportive respiratory and physiotherapy
Prognosis of Long Covid in children and adolescents
In the majority of affected children and adolescents, the symptoms disappear on their own after a few weeks or months. In a non-negligible number of cases, however, the symptoms persist even months later. At present, it is not possible to say to what extent they will disappear completely.
Is a vaccination useful as protection against Long Covid?
A coronavirus vaccination not only protects children and adolescents against Sars-CoV-2 infection, but also reduces the risk of Long Covid.
How reliable is the data on Long Covid in children?
They underpin an existing risk of long-term health consequences after a Sars-CoV-2 infection for all age groups – including (unvaccinated) children and adolescents.
