Vaccinated children are much less likely to develop “long COVID” than unvaccinated children, according to a new study that researchers hope will convince parents to keep kids’ immunizations up to date.
Many parents don’t get their children vaccinated against COVID-19 because pediatric cases are generally mild. But the study of post-COVID condition (PCC), as scientists call long COVID, supports continued vigilance, researchers say. The new study looked at children ages 5 to 17 in four states from July 2021 through May 2023. If they’d been vaccinated prior to infection, their chances of developing one or more PCC symptoms were reduced by 57%.
“Vaccines don’t always prevent infection, but if you are infected, the body has a defense system ready to go, so the infection doesn’t get worse,” said study co-author Sarang Kim Yoon, DO, associate professor of occupational and environmental health at the University of Utah Medical School. While adults are more likely to get long COVID than are children, the risk of pediatric PCC is between 1% and 3% among those infected with COVID, the authors noted. “It was a minority of the kids who developed long COVID, but the majority of the vaccinated kids did pretty well,” Yoon said. “So the recommendation from this study is to vaccinate kids.”
Of the 622 children who had at least one positive COVID test during the study period, 28 (5%) reported PCC symptoms and 594 (95%) didn’t report any during the follow-up period. PCC is defined as a persistent illness lasting four or more weeks after the initial phase of infection. Symptoms included respiratory issues, fatigue, weakness, difficulty in exercising, change in energy level, mood changes, and sleep disturbance. In rare cases, PCC may cause serious symptoms such as acute pulmonary embolism, myocarditis, cardiomyopathy, kidney failure, and type 1 diabetes. Of the children with PCC in the study, 57% had been vaccinated.
Vaccinated children had a 73% reduced likelihood of two or more PCC symptoms and a 72% reduced likelihood of respiratory PCC symptoms. The authors noted that vaccination protection against PCC may be even stronger than the numbers suggest. This is because both the case and control groups had been infected at some point, and the estimates did not look at how many infections vaccination prevented in the first place. Generally, between 10% and 30% of children hospitalized for COVID have severe illness, according to the CDC.