Devastated parents have revealed how they are struggling to help their children as they cope with the effects of Covid long after they had the illness.

Experts, support groups and parents have told Metro.co.uk about multiple cases of people under 18 struggling with long-term and severe health problems after getting coronavirus. 

Those affected include a two-year-old girl still having major problems nine months after developing symptoms, and previously healthy youngsters unable to get out of bed. 

Parents have described more than 100 symptoms to the organisers of the Long Covid Kids support group, including a ‘large number’ of children having appendicitis problems, as well as some reports of paralysis, ‘electric shock’ like feelings to the eyes and head, testicular pain, liver damage, ‘Covid toes’ and new-onset seizures.

The emerging concerns are likely to provoke worries among parents and renew anxieties around when schools should reopen and whether youngsters should be vaccinated sooner.

The impact of long Covid – a catch all term to describe a plethora of ongoing symptoms in coronavirus patients – has been branded ‘worse than a ticking time bomb’. 

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates one in ten people who test positive will get long Covid.

It also says 12.9% of 2-11 year olds and 14.5% of 12-16 years still have symptoms five weeks after initially getting the virus.

Children remain far less at risk of serious illness when they initially contract Covid-19 and the majority are either unaffected or fully recover quickly. 

However, support groups are now warning that there could be longer-term risks for some infected children. 

Symptoms in people under 18 appear to be distinct from older long Covid sufferers, but fluctuate and vary dramatically, posing problems for collecting reliable data.

Dr Clare Rayner, a retired consultant occupational physician who is only just recovering from long Covid after being infected in March, said: ‘We are seeing severe health damage. I have seen 12-year-olds that have not been able to go to school for a month or get out of bed.

‘Awful, awful skin problems where it’s almost like they have got a problem with their blood vessels and so they start to get really dreadful skin problems, like areas of skin becoming really inflamed and actually blackened.

‘This goes on for weeks and months.’ 

She continued: ‘The message has been it doesn’t affect children and young people and that is not true.

‘(There are) children with severe abdominal pain, eight-year-olds with palpitations, heart problems, severe headaches. I know any number of children affected in that way – almost the same as adults but slightly more skin and abdominal problems.’

Dr Rayner, who suggested genetics could play a part in whether youngsters get long Covid, said children’s lungs do not appear to be as badly affected as adults. 

She continued: ‘In the beginning with the children they seem to get practically unnoticeable illness and then this thing creeps in four to eight weeks later, so there seems to be a delay. That’s different to adults.’

Melissa Duvall, from Cornwall, says her daughter Emily, two, now has seizures and needs physio, nine months after getting stomach issues linked to Covid. 

She is still on medication for serious complications and her sonographer said that the problems are ‘consistent with Multi-system Inflammatory Syndrome in children with Covid-19’. The condition is similar to Kawasaki Syndrome and affects various parts of the body, including many organs. 

Rifkah Cohen and her two children, Isaac, seven, and David, 12, first got ill in March.  

She explained to Metro.co.uk that her older son had diarrhoea and vomiting before developing flu-like symptoms, nausea, ringing ears and fatigue. He slept for hours, which was ‘really unlike’ him, she added, before both she and her younger son developed similar symptoms.

‘We were told that it would be two weeks maximum before recovering after a mild case, but the kids went on having symptoms for months and months, with severe headaches, four different rashes, nose bleeds, stomach problems, as well as muscle and joint pain.’

She describes how, as the months went on, they developed new symptoms, like loss of balance, altered sense of taste and severe chest pains. 

Ms Cohen had to stop giving her boys Calpol for fear of liver damage, after they went through 18 bottles following five to six months of pain. 

Although some symptoms have improved, exhaustion and brain fog continues, which she says is affecting their mood and school work 10 months in. 

‘Lockdown is hard, but dealing with long Covid is harder’, she warns.

Experts remain unsure of how long symptoms could last, with some reports of people still being unwell after first developing symptoms in November 2019. 

The Long Covid Kids group says 4,000 children have been admitted to hospital since the pandemic began – with half of those under 5. Some 858 were admitted in December alone, it says. 

Sammie Mcfarland, 44, set up the group in October, seven months after she and her daughter, 15, became ill. They have still not recovered.

More than 600 families have already joined the group. 

Explaining how a doctor accused her daughter of ‘copying’ her symptoms, she told Metro.co.uk: ‘Education and health decisions are made based on data available, but if the data on long Covid in children is not available then how can decisions be justified? 

Claire Hastie, the founder of a long Covid sufferers group including adults, which now has over 33,000 members, says she and her children were all battered by the virus for months after being infected in March – and still face occasional relapses. 

Her eldest and younger twins, now aged 16 and 12, have had multiple reoccurrences of stomach problems and between them have faced sickness, diarrhoea, arthritic pain, fatigue, headaches, chest pain and ‘covid toes’. 

Ms Hastie now needs a wheelchair after previously cycling 13 miles a day.

It comes as a recent study showed that one in eight ‘recovered’ Covid patients actually die within 140 days.

Dr Amitava Banerjee, an expert looking at long Covid with the ONS, told Metro.co.uk: ‘The problem is that we were distracted by the fact that mortality rate is extremely low in children and that has led to the assumption that Covid is not too harmful in children. 

‘That is not necessarily the case, but in order to know the impact we need to look for it and we need to measure it.’

Turning to young adults, he said: ‘I have seen a couple of people myself who are very young and fit, one person is a triathlete who now struggles to climb stairs. So younger and fitter doesn’t necessarily protect you.’

The Associate Professor at UCL described the recent surge in cases as ‘worse than a ticking time bomb’ because the impact is already being felt – and warned that infections need to be suppressed until everyone is vaccinated to avoid long Covid wreaking further havoc.

Dr David Strain, a clinical senior lecturer looking into the issue, said there tended to be two groups of long Covid sufferers: those with a ‘hangover’ from a severe initial illness and generally hospitalisation, and a group who did not get severely unwell the first time. 

The Covid response group member explained that the second category is ‘clearly affecting the younger, fitter population’.

In August, the UK’s chief medical officers issued a joint statement, which declared an ‘overall consensus’ that children have a lower risk of catching the virus, having severe disease or hospitalisation and dying.

They added: ’Very few, if any, children or teenagers will come to long-term harm from Covid-19 due solely to attending school.’

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: ‘We are working with the UK’s leading scientists on an ongoing basis to improve our collective understanding of the knock on effects of long Covid and to make sure we have the best treatments available – including the impact it has on all ages.

‘New specialist long Covid NHS clinics have opened across the country, providing assessment for adults, children and young people alike. These clinics will be play an invaluable role by helping medical experts to assess, diagnose and treat thousands of people suffering with the debilitating long-term health implications of this virus.’

To get in touch with the Long Covid Kids group, click here and for NHS advice, click here.

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