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Saturday, March 1, 2025

For kids with COVID-19, everyday life can be a struggle

by

1082 days ago
20220314
Alyssa Carpenter, 2, and her sister Audrey Carpenter, 5, play with toy horses on the floor of the home office of their mother, Tara Carpenter, in Haymarket, Va., Friday, Jan. 28, 2022. Alyssa has had COVID-19 twice and suffers long-term symptoms. She and her two sisters are part of a NIH-funded multi-year study at Children's National Hospital to look at impacts of COVID-19 on children's physical health and quality of life. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Alyssa Carpenter, 2, and her sister Audrey Carpenter, 5, play with toy horses on the floor of the home office of their mother, Tara Carpenter, in Haymarket, Va., Friday, Jan. 28, 2022. Alyssa has had COVID-19 twice and suffers long-term symptoms. She and her two sisters are part of a NIH-funded multi-year study at Children's National Hospital to look at impacts of COVID-19 on children's physical health and quality of life. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

By COLLEEN LONG and CAR­OLYN KASTER-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — Eight-year-old Brook­lynn Chiles fid­gets on the hos­pi­tal bed as she waits for the nurse at Chil­dren’s Na­tion­al Hos­pi­tal. The white pa­per be­neath her crin­kles as she shifts to look at the med­ical ob­jects in the room. She’s had coro­n­avirus three times, and no one can fig­ure out why.

Brook­lynn’s lucky, sort of. Each time she has test­ed pos­i­tive, she has suf­fered no ob­vi­ous symp­toms. But her dad, Rod­ney, caught the virus — pos­si­bly from her — when she was pos­i­tive back in Sep­tem­ber, and he died from it.

Her mom, Danielle, is dread­ing a next bout, fear­ing her daugh­ter could be­come grave­ly ill even though she’s been vac­ci­nat­ed.

“Every time, I think: Am I go­ing to go through this with her, too?” she said, sit­ting on a plas­tic chair wedged in the cor­ner. “Is this the mo­ment where I lose every­one?”

Among the puz­zling out­comes of the coro­n­avirus, which has killed more than 6 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide since it first emerged in 2019, are the symp­toms suf­fered by chil­dren.

More than 12.7 mil­lion chil­dren in the U.S. alone have test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 since the pan­dem­ic be­gan, ac­cord­ing to the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pe­di­atrics. Gen­er­al­ly, the virus doesn’t hit kids as se­vere­ly as adults.

But, as with some adults, there are still bizarre out­comes. Some young­sters suf­fer un­ex­plained symp­toms long af­ter the virus is gone, what’s of­ten called long COVID. Oth­ers get re­in­fect­ed. Some seem to re­cov­er fine, on­ly to be struck lat­er by a mys­te­ri­ous con­di­tion that caus­es se­vere or­gan in­flam­ma­tion.

And all that can come on top of griev­ing for loved ones killed by the virus and oth­er in­ter­rup­tions to a nor­mal child­hood.

COVID-19


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