A recent study revealed that while long COVID was relatively rare in children, it was still prevalent in hospitalized adolescents, who were over the age of 14.

The study, recently published in JAMA Network Open, is one in all the most important to ever investigate the lingering effects of COVID-19 in children, with greater than 2,000 of them tracked for at the very least 90 days beyond the initial Covid infection.

Per the findings, 9.8% of youngsters that were hospitalized with COVID-19 displayed some lingering symptoms for up to a few months later. Meanwhile, that rate dropped to 4.6% for non-hospitalized children. An initial hospitalization of 48 or more hours and 4 or more symptoms on the initial ED visit were also related to long COVID.

“We found that in some children, illness with COVID-19 is related to reporting persistent symptoms after 3 months. Our result suggest that appropriate guidance and follow-up are needed, especially for kids at high risk for long COVID,” said principal investigator Stephen Freedman with the Cumming School of Medicine at University of Calgary and Alberta Health Services.

“Reported rates of long COVID in adults are substantially higher than what we present in children . Our findings can inform public health policy decisions regarding COVID-19 mitigation strategies for kids and screening approaches for long COVID amongst those with severe infections,” added co-principal investigator Nathan Kuppermann from University of California, Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento. 

Based on the study findings, probably the most reported persistent symptoms in children included cough, weakness or fatigue, and difficulty in respiratory or shortness of breath.

But exactly why older children seem more prone to develop long COVID in comparison with younger children remains to be unclear. One hypothesis suggests older children usually tend to have the ability to verbalize specific symptoms in comparison with young children.

While the findings of the study is somewhat excellent news for fogeys, it still indicates that for a small minority of young people, the persistent condition remains to be an issue.

To that end, experts suggest multidisciplinary care if the symptoms start impacting the standard of life. After all, stopping Covid in the primary place remains to be the best plan of action.