Children could be left dealing with long-term consequences of Covid-19 – expert

Children could be left dealing with the long-term consequences of the Covid-19 crisis with concerns around mental health, despite having a much lower risk of being severely affected by the disease, a leading paediatrician advising the Government has suggested.

Speaking at a webinar organised by the The Royal Society of Medicine, Professor Russell Viner, who is a member of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said that while children haven not been at the “front and centre” of the clinical response to the disease, there is an increasing risk that they would be potentially affected as much adults when it comes to the long-term effects of the pandemic.

He said: “You could almost argue that children and young people – we have put their lives on hold, we have put their education on hold, they have had a whole series of harms because of what we have done to benefit the middle-aged and the elderly, and we need to think about equity across generations over the coming years.”

He said that mortality risk in children has been much lower compared to adults, with 11 deaths for under-18s compared to over 40,000 for adults, adding: “In one sense, that tells us everything we need to know about differential risks”.

There have been rare exceptions where children have been severely affected by the disease – such the illness known as Paediatric Inflammatory Multisystem Syndrome Temporally (PIMS-TS), he added.

Although there has been some uncertainty about the role children might play in transmission of the virus, Prof Viner said a recent review of studies around the world, which he led, suggests children are half as likely to catch coronavirus than adults.

He added: “My take on it is that children – individual children – can be highly infective and can have high individual viral load, but as a population, as they are less likely to get it, they don’t play a major role in the transmission.”

He said that while there is “very little evidence” of Sars-Cov-2 transmission in schools and nurseries, the data on transmission is “very complex”.

He added: “There is the occasional outbreaks in schools we have documented from a number of countries but actually those countries that have reopened schools – Denmark, Germany and Norway and others – are telling us they are not seeing outbreaks in schools and elsewhere.”

Prof Viner said that mental health of children and young people has been a “real concern” very early on, with many unable to access “protective systems” during the pandemic, some of which would have been provided by schools.

He said that while some children enjoyed staying at home, others were in “pressure cooker situations”, such as living in crowded spaces or being exposed to domestic violence and deprivation.

Prof Viner added: “Clearly, more needs to be done and this will be one of the major consequences of Covid-19.”