Sadly, they are not alone. In America today, nearly 18 million adults suffer from Long COVID. And, despite what you may have heard, Long COVID does not just impact adults and the elderly. It impacts people from all ages and all backgrounds. In fact, nearly 6 million children in our country have been affected by Long COVID.
And that, she says, is what most people fail to understand about long COVID: how serious it is, how much is at stake — how fast a healthy girl with boundless energy and big dreams can lose it all. "They think it's incredibly rare, or they don't understand that just because you had one 'nice' bout of COVID doesn't mean the next one isn't going to do permanent damage," Katie says. "People just underestimate it; they assume it won't happen to them and if it does, that someone will be there to help them."
She knew about Long COVID, the name for chronic symptoms following an infection, because her 11-year-old son has it. But “he didn’t have anything like this,” she says. “His set of symptoms are totally different,” involving spiking fevers and vocal and motor tics. Her own experience was so different from her son's, it was hard to believe the same condition could be to blame. “I just thought, ‘It’s really coincidental that I never got well, and now I’m getting worse,’” she says.
COVID-19 was associated with a significantly increased risk for RSV infections among children aged 0–5 years in 2022. Similar findings were replicated for a study population of children aged 0–5 years in 2021. Our findings suggest that COVID-19 contributed to the 2022 surge of RSV cases in young children through the large buildup of COVID-19-infected children and the potential long-term adverse effects of COVID-19 on the immune and respiratory system.
Lindsey Wang, Pamela B Davis, Nathan Berger, David C Kaelber, Nora Volkow, Rong Xu
The incidence of new seizures or epilepsy diagnoses in the 6 months after COVID-19 was low overall, but higher than in matched patients with influenza. This difference was more marked in people who were not hospitalized, highlighting the risk of epilepsy and seizures even in those with less severe infection. Children appear at particular risk of seizures and epilepsy after COVID-19 providing another motivation to prevent COVID-19 infection in pediatric populations.
Maxime Taquet, MD, PhD; Orrin Devinsky, MD, PhD; J. Helen Cross, MD, PhD; Paul J. Harrison, DM, FRCPsych; and Arjune Sen, MD, PhD
Children – even healthy teens and the very young – can have long Covid, several studies have found, and it can follow an infection that’s severe or mild.
For people with COVID who were hospitalised, the point at which a diagnosis of seizures or epilepsy was most common was at nine days after infection. For those who were not hospitalised, the peak was at 41 days. In children with COVID, the peak point for seizures or epilepsy was at 50 days after infection and at that time children who had COVID were three times more likely to have epilepsy or seizures than children who had flu.
Arjune Sen
Head of the Oxford Epilepsy Research Group, University of Oxford
From my point of view, right now, avoiding flu and COVID-19 is a priority. Those are not going to help you develop a healthy immune response, and in fact, they can do a lot of damage to the lungs during that critical developmental time. Data [show] that children that have more infections in the first 6 months to a year of life go on to have more problems.
Caitlin Rivers interviewing Marsha Wills-Karp, PHD, MHS (Chair of Johns Hopkins Department of Environmental Health and Engineering)
