How Many Children Get Long COVID?

Why serious Long COVID is uncommon for adolescents and rare in younger children.

Pictured: Children. Probably. Almost certainly. We cannot be 100% sure, but they do even on close inspection appear to be children. Photo by Ben Wicks on Unsplash

Long COVID has remained a contentious issue for years. These days, the discussions are particularly polarized. On one side you have extremists who believe that the condition basically doesn’t exist, and that people are misleading patients by ascribing their symptoms to COVID-19. On the other, you’ve got a range of advocates who claim that Long COVID is going to quite literally end society as we know it.

As is usually the case, one of the most controversial parts of this discussion is the impact that Long COVID has on children. While most of our estimates seem to show that children quite rarely get severe COVID-19 and don’t usually suffer long-term symptoms, there have recently been claims that this is untrue. A study recently went viral, with Medscape reporting that doctors have revised their estimates of Long COVID in children upwards. According to this new research, a staggering 20% of children suffer from long-term symptoms after catching COVID-19.

Except, the study doesn’t say that. While Long COVID is a genuine issue and a real disease, it’s far less common in children than adults. The true rate of Long COVID in kids is at least an order of magnitude lower than this recent headline suggests.