Despite the perception that COVID-19 isn’t a pediatric disease, a growing number of young children are now exhibiting symptoms of long COVID, researchers say.
RT’s Three Key Takeaways:
- Young children can develop long COVID: Rutgers-led research confirms that infants, toddlers, and preschoolers can experience long COVID, though symptoms may differ from those seen in older children.
- Symptoms are often subtle and overlooked: Long COVID in young children commonly presents as fussiness, poor sleep, low energy, or persistent cough—symptoms that are easy to miss or misattribute.
- Timely recognition is critical: Early diagnosis by caregivers and pediatricians is essential to ensure children receive appropriate treatment and support, preventing delays in care and services.
Infants, toddlers and preschoolers exhibit symptoms of long COVID, but the symptoms can be different and more difficult to identify in these children, according to Rutgers Health research.
The new study is part of the National Institutes of Health-funded Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) initiative and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics.
Lawrence Kleinman, a professor and vice chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and a professor of global public health at Rutgers School of Public Health, is the lead investigator for the Collaborative Long-term study of Outcomes of COVID-19 in Kids (CLOCK), a national consortium led by Rutgers.
“The COVID pandemic began with a myth – that children are spared its ill effects. In contrast, many children were sick with COVID, and we now have a new chronic illness emerging,” Kleinman said. “We are working hard to characterize long COVID in children and it will be critical for policymakers to assure that we have adequate resources to support and manage these children now and in the future.”
Of the total 1,011 children included in the study, 472 were infants and toddlers (children 2 years old or younger) and 539 were preschoolers (children 3 to 5 years old). Overall, 101 (15%) of the 677 children with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection were identified as likely having long COVID. The symptoms in these age groups differ from those reported among school age children and teens. Infants and toddlers with long COVID were more likely to experience difficulty sleeping, fussiness, poor appetite, stuffy nose and coughing while preschoolers were more likely to experience coughing and daytime tiredness and low energy.
Researchers said they can confirm that younger children can have long COVID. Clinicians and caregivers may not recognize long COVID in these children because they are unfamiliar with it. The authors explain too that the inability of younger children to describe how they feel may make identification more difficult in this age group. For similar reasons it is important for pediatricians and family physicians to consider long COVID when children present with the symptoms described. Failure to diagnose can delay treatment and inhibit availability of supportive services to children.
“This study is the largest systematic look at long COVID in younger children in the United States,” said Sunanda Gaur, a professor of pediatrics and director of the Adult and Pediatric Clinical Research Centers at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital. “It suggests that this is an illness that children, families, pediatricians and the health care and educational system will be dealing with for a generation.”
