An increasing number of children, adolescents, and young adults are suffering from long- COVID symptoms nearly a year or more after recovering from their initial illness. The new Post-COVID Program at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. is treating and studying these young people to help bring them and others relief and get their lives back on track.  

Disrupting Young Lives

The entire Rodriguez family contracted COVID-19 around Thanksgiving 2020, and everyone recovered quickly from their acute infections. Ten months later, however, 17-year-old athlete Messiah Rodriguez still struggles with lingering health issues. “My chest was hurting a lot more,” he said in an interview. “I can hardly pay attention. My hair started falling out, also.” 

Messiah’s mother added that there are times when he can’t get off the couch due to crippling pain and fatigue and it’s not just his physical health that’s been impacted. “He sees a therapist weekly for depression and anxiety,” she said. “We’ve pretty much been at the doctor, if not weekly, then definitely biweekly since Thanksgiving.”

Increasing Pediatric Hospitalizations 

Experts estimate that up to 15% of children and adolescents infected with the coronavirus could develop long COVID, with a wide array of physical, mental, and neurological symptoms. Pediatric hospitalizations have been on the rise, and both scientists and medical professionals are doing their best to study the phenomenon at the same time they’re treating the symptoms.  Understanding why certain people are affected and predicting how long symptoms may last have proven challenging. 

Even young people who were previously healthy, both physically and intellectually, are finding it difficult to regain their former abilities. “A lot of these kids are just very high-functioning to begin with — athletes, star scholars — and are not able to do what they previously did and are looking for some way to get back to their baseline, back to their normal,” said Dr. Alexandra Yonts, who heads the program. 

What We Know So Far

According to Yonts, the program has yielded some helpful, albeit early, data. Most of the patients so far have been older adolescents like Messiah, though the program has treated children as young as three.

“Fatigue is by and away the most common symptom that is reported,” said Yonts. “Kids also have reported a lot of issues with sleep, difficulty concentrating, or that brain fog that you may hear referred to.” 

“We have a couple of kids that have had very persistent shortness of breath,” she continued, “…some that have had joint pain and quite a few actually that have still had loss of taste and smell, even 10 months out from their initial COVID infection.”

Both Experts and Patients Advise Caution

As with adult patients, the team at Children’s National is seeing young people with mild initial COVID-19 infections going on to develop serious long-term symptoms. The hospital is partnering with the National Institutes of Health to study long COVID, enrolling up to 2,000 children and young adults to participate in the research.

For Messiah Rodriguez, he’s treating his experience as an opportunity to educate other young people like himself. Easing into his senior year of high school after taking the summer to rest, he’s sharing his story with classmates and other peers, warning them to be attentive and take precautions. 

“No matter how healthy you are,” he said, “COVID can hit you and get you, like, really sick.  So, I think other people need to hear my story. I had COVID also and you could get it too, if you’re not safe.”

*Gentzler, D. and Fantis, P. (2021, Sep. 7). Children’s National in DC Treating, Studying Kids With ‘Long COVID’. NBC Washington. https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/childrens-national-in-dc-treating-studying-kids-with-long-covid/2794383/

Much about the novel coronavirus, i.e., COVID-19, is still not fully understood. As research progresses and our knowledge of the virus increases, information can change rapidly. We strive to update all of our articles as quickly as possible, but there may occasionally be some lag between scientific developments and our revisions.