Long COVID affects millions of people and does not discriminate based on age. While comparatively rare, even children are facing rising rates of the disease. Learn more about one child’s experience and what we know about long COVID in juvenile patients.* 

Who is Haley Bryson?

Before her COVID-19 diagnosis, Haley Bryson was a nine-year-old fourth-grader who enjoyed basketball and gymnastics. During the infection stage of the virus, Bryson experienced a relatively mild reaction and recovered. However, days later, she became sick again. 

For about two months, Bryson experienced some combination of headache, fatigue, stomachache, sore throat, earache, or breathlessness every day. “She ended up losing 17 pounds from her already small frame,” her mother said. 

After more than half a dozen trips to her pediatrician, urgent care, and the emergency room, Bryson was referred to Children’s National Hospital in Washington D.C., where she was diagnosed with long COVID and treated in the Pediatric Post-COVID Program. 

While long-COVID cases are rare in children, Bryson, who has since recovered, is not alone. Many children across the United States still report an array of symptoms like she had and others. 

Kennedy Krieger Institute, Yale New Haven Hospital, and Texas Children’s Hospital have created pediatric long-COVID clinics and have all reported an uptick in cases ever since the Delta-fueled surge in early 2021.

What Do Experts Know about Long COVID in Children?

While more research is being conducted to explore the origins of long COVID in children, Dr. Carlos Oliveira, pediatric infectious disease doctor at Yale Medicine, has two possible theories: 

1. The virus proteins linger in the body and continually leak into the bloodstream, causing an immune system reaction. 
2. Antibodies that are made against the virus are attacking the host, leading to damage long after the virus is gone. 

There have been several studies on long COVID launched in recent months, including by the United States National Institutes of Health. The research will allow the medical landscape to learn more as time goes on. 

While we wait for these findings, Dr. Frank Bell, pediatric infectious disease physician at the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, emphasizes the importance of vaccination: 

“By being careful about your exposures and by being immunized, and by supporting your kids in their recovery from COVID, we think we’ve got a good way to bring that small risk down to something that’s even less likely to happen and be a worry for an individual child or his or her family,” he said. 

*Golden, H. (2022, February 2). ‘The scariest thing’: the children living with long Covid. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/feb/01/children-long-covid-coronavirus 

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.