Long COVID symptoms and duration in SARS-CoV-2 positive children — a nationwide cohort study, 2021, Borch et al

Abstract

Most children have a mild course of acute COVID-19. Only few mainly non-controlled studies with small sample size have evaluated long-term recovery from SARS-CoV-2 infection in children. The aim of this study was to evaluate symptoms and duration of ‘long COVID’ in children.

A nationwide cohort study of 37,522 children aged 0–17 years with RT-PCR verified SARS-CoV-2 infection (response rate 44.9%) and a control group of 78,037 children (response rate 21.3%). An electronic questionnaire was sent to all children from March 24th until May 9th, 2021.

Symptoms lasting > 4 weeks were common among both SARS-CoV-2 children and controls. However, SARS-CoV-2 children aged 6–17 years reported symptoms more frequently than the control group (percent difference 0.8%). The most reported symptoms among pre-school children were fatigue Risk Difference (RD) 0.05 (CI 0.04–0.06), loss of smell RD 0.01 (CI 0.01–0.01), loss of taste RD 0.01 (CI 0.01–0.02) and muscle weakness RD 0.01 (CI 0.00–0.01). Among school children the most significant symptoms were loss of smell RD 0.12 (CI 0.12–0.13), loss of taste RD 0.10 (CI 0.09–0.10), fatigue RD 0.05 (CI 0.05–0.06), respiratory problems RD 0.03 (CI 0.03–0.04), dizziness RD 0.02 (CI 0.02–0.03), muscle weakness RD 0.02 (CI 0.01–0.02) and chest pain RD 0.01 (CI 0.01–0.01). Children in the control group experienced significantly more concentration difficulties, headache, muscle and joint pain, cough, nausea, diarrhea and fever than SARS-CoV-2 infected. In most children ‘long COVID’ symptoms resolved within 1–5 months.

Conclusions: Long COVID in children is rare and mainly of short duration.

Open access, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00431-021-04345-z

 

The paper says
"Depending on age, symptoms resolved in a minimum of 54–75% of children within 1–5 months (Fig. 5, panel A). Thirty-nine percent of SARS-CoV-2 infected respondents reported ongoing symptoms at the date of answering the questionnaire."

which would seem to indicate that, depending on age, 25-46% of those affected had symptoms lasting 6 months or more.

 

This doesn't seem right. Of course it could simply be that most weren't tested (a fact that we know) or missed the testing window and a significant % of the controls have LC or symptoms from another infection.

Of course there are many reasons why children could have symptoms, such as allergies, asthma and so on. But the idea that a significant % of children have such symptoms is contrary to what is commonly reported. It's literally a trope to say "you're too young to be ill", although I don't put much credit behind that idea, it's clear that medicine misses out on most things. But is that what it's revealing, then?

Because if symptoms are common in both groups and nearly half of Covid+ have symptoms, that should mean that almost half of children have significant symptoms all the time for no known reason, which seems very wrong and would actually upend almost everything about pediatric medicine, and medicine in general.

Unless I'm missing something here but it doesn't add up. Or it's one way to hide the bad news that nearly half of children have LC symptoms by diluting it with a false denominator suggesting that nearly half of children are chronically ill. Odd.

 

Which is not rare......

 

A couple of Twitter threads about this study, including one from @Lucibee

 

Looks like the problems with the study will be overlooked because people want to hear good news.

Figure 4 shows that in the control group certain symptoms are more common than in cases. I think this shows that this study does not actually have a proper control group.

 

Yeah big problems with this study

https://twitter.com/user/status/1487366920508694529