While the coronavirus causes relatively mild symptoms in most children, there are signs that the virus can have long-term effects on once-healthy teenagers.
Danilo Buonsenso treats children at Gemelli University Hospital in Rome, Italy. Before the illness, they were active and most of them participated in various sports and activities after school.
Then they caught COVID-19 and recovered for months, but they still had all kinds of symptoms and couldn’t go back to normal life.
“Most children are completely healthy until they are infected with the Novel Coronavirus, and they all play sports and after-school activities……,” Busenthal said You can’t go back to normal school life because of headaches or difficulty concentrating.”
Boussenso, a pediatrician at Jemery University Hospital, was the first doctor to investigate whether children were chronically infected with Coronavirus. Like many pediatricians, he sees children with symptoms like fatiguing pain, respiratory problems, rashes, and heart palpitations that don’t go away and can last for months after infection.
Bussenso said it was crucial that research into the long-term symptoms of COVID-19 did not forget children. He noted that, like adults, even children who are asymptomatic or mildly infected can have ongoing problems.
Children are thought to be less vulnerable to the long-term effects of COVID-19, and the younger they are, the lower the risk. It is thought this may be because younger children do not have as many ACE2 receptors, which are key for the virus to invade cells in the nose and respiratory tract.