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.