While children were initially thought to be spared from the worst of SARS-CoV-2, more than two years later, long COVID clinics are full of pediatric patients, with parents looking for guidance on a range of symptoms affecting their kids' daily lives.
Dr. Amanda Morrow, of Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, a co-author of the PASC guidance, noted the many challenges that kids with long COVID face.
Patients at the clinic were previously healthy, with very few experiencing medical issues until their COVID-19 infections, which were mostly mild in nature, Morrow noted. "Many of our kids are complaining of difficulty with school," Morrow said. "So some of the cognitive difficulties that you hear about in an adult, for children that's manifesting as difficulty with schoolwork, dropping grades, having trouble paying attention in class, [the ability] to participate in a full school day, because of their symptoms."
Kleinman noted that the concerns around long COVID in children extend beyond school performance and daily life."We also don't know -- and this is particularly salient for kids who are going to live a long time -- what is beneath the surface," he said. "When you think about the iceberg, the prototypical iceberg, the symptoms are above the surface, maybe the laboratory tests that you can look at are at the surface or just immediately below the surface.
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