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Good morning, L.A. It’s April 26.
By this point, most of us are likely familiar with the common symptoms of COVID-19: dry cough, fever, difficulty breathing in more severe cases. What’s less known, though, are the symptoms of long COVID — and some young people are learning about them the hard way.
My colleague Jackie Fortiér, who has been reporting on the pandemic since its onset in 2020, writes that more than half a million children in L.A. County have tested positive for the virus so far, and an estimated 10% to 20% of that group will likely develop long COVID.
One major difference between long COVID in adults and in children is that young people often don’t develop symptoms upon their initial infection. So if long COVID does strike, it’s not top of mind for pediatricians.
It may seem, then, that they “have symptoms for which there is no clear cause,” said Dr. Sindhu Mohandas, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Those symptoms can include being tired and unable to concentrate at school or keep up physically while playing sports.
“Sometimes it involves several visits to their pediatrician trying to figure out what’s going on before people start thinking about linking it to COVID,” said Mohandas.
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