'Children get well early, no long Covid'

NEW DELHI: Long lasting symptoms of Covid-19 are rare in children, a new study published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health journal has confirmed. Children typically get better after six days of the infection and the number that experience symptoms beyond four weeks is low, just around 4%.
The study, based on data reported through a smartphone app by parents and caregivers, provides the first detailed description of Covid in symptomatic school-aged children and reassures that long-term symptoms are rare. In contrast, multiple studies of Covid patients in India and abroad have established that adults continue to suffer from prolonged illness for many months in a condition termed Long Covid.
Responding to the new findings, Dr Anupam Sibal, senior paediatric gastroenterologist at Apollo Hospitals, said, “Even in India, in both the first and the second wave of infection, most kids with Covid were asymptomatic. They got diagnosed only because some family member had tested positive and they were tested too.” He added that the few children who were symptomatic suffered mild fever, cough and loss of sense of smell. “Only around 1% of the children who tested positive for Covid required hospitalisation because of multi-systemic inflammation,” Sibal said.
In the new Lancet study, the researchers used data collected through the ZOE Covid Study smartphone app related to 250,000 children aged five-17 years in the UK. Symptoms were reported through the app by their parents or carers, rather than assessed directly in children. The team did not collect data on school attendance, a statement from The Lancet said.
Most children recovered within four weeks, with a minority experiencing symptoms after a month (4.4%, 77 out of 1,734). Typically, they had only two symptoms remaining after four weeks. The commonest symptom experienced by children with long illness was fatigue, with 84% (65 of 77) reporting fatigue at some point in their illness as a persistent symptom. Headache and loss of sense of smell were also common, each symptom experienced by 77.9% of the children at some stage of their illness. However, headache was more common early in illness while loss of sense of smell tended to occur later and to persist longer.
Of the 1,379 children who developed symptoms at least two months before the end of the study period (on or before December 29, 2020), fewer than 2% experienced symptoms for longer than eight weeks (1.8%, 25 of 1,379).
Older children were typically ill longer than primary-school-aged children (average illness duration seven days for those aged 12-17 years against five for those 5-11 years), the researchers found.
Professor Emma Duncan of King’s College, London, lead and senior author of the study, said, “It is reassuring that the number of children experiencing long-lasting symptoms of Covid is low. Nevertheless, a small number do experience long illness with Covid, and our study validates the experiences of these children and their families.”