Covid: One in seven children with virus still have symptoms after 15 weeks

Figure ‘not trivial’ but ‘nowhere near’ as high as some predicted, says study author

A student takes a lateral flow test at a school in Doncaster, Yorkshire, in March 2021 (PA)

As many as one in seven children who test positive for coronavirus display symptoms 15 weeks later, a study into long Covid in children has found.

The research, the most comprehensive of its kind in the world, has collected data from 7,000 people aged between 11 and 17 since it started in December. The cohort consisted of those who had a positive PCR test result and others who had not caught the virus.

Children’s health experts discovered that those who contracted the disease were twice as likely - almost four months after they tested positive for Covid-19 - to complain of headaches, fatigue and dizziness than those in the control group.

They concluded that as many as 32,000 out of the 235,000 11-to-17-year-olds who had coronavirus between September and March developed long Covid.

Lead author Professor Sir Terence Stephenson, from the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, said he was “reassured” by the early results, which were “nowhere near” as high as some suggestions made last year. “I think overall it’s better than people would have guessed back in December,” he said.

However, he added that the total was “not trivial” and suggested long Covid in children must be taken seriously.

The Children and young people with Long Covid (CLoCk) study will continue to monitor children’s health, assessing those who contracted the disease six months, one year and two years after their positive test result.

Sir Terence expressed his hope that its results would enable policy-makers to make informed decisions on matters such as school safety and child vaccinations.

“This provides some data that allows them to make judgements and policy decisions on hard evidence, rather than speculation,” he said.

His comments come as The Independent learned children’s vaccinations are reportedly being held back over fears they could interrupt the booster programme for the elderly, despite Sajid Javid saying on Saturday that “offering all teenagers the jab would solidify our wall of protection”.

The results of the CLoCk study follow the release of Office for National Statistics (ONS) data last month which estimated that 34,000 children in the UK were suffering from long Covid.

In total, the government agency said that roughly 945,000 people had the syndrome, 380,000 of whom had experienced the condition for more than a year.

The most common symptom associated with long Covid is fatigue, followed by shortness of breath, muscle aches and loss of smell.