Long COVID-19 spreads a wide toxic net that includes children

Exhausted infection preventers and other healthcare professionals may want to end COVID-19 – just as, presumably, everyone in the United States and around the world would like to end it – but COVID-19, sadly, may not be done with us. Even though new COVID-19 infections have fallen by 25% in the past 2 weeks according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, signaling that perhaps the worst of the Delta variant is behind us, new data gives some idea of ​​what could happen to us.

And it is not pretty.

A large study in PLOS Medicine shows that 1 in 3 COVID-19 survivors show symptoms of the disease 3 to 6 months after the initial infection. Scientists and medical experts have often had to depend on studies that have not yet been peer reviewed because COVID-19 is evolving so rapidly. The fact that the PLOS Medicine study had been peer-reviewed may make the findings even more baffling. The study may also help silence suggestions that the effects of COVID-19 persist as long as those of the flu and, in fact, perhaps curb the suggestion of any sort of equivalence between the two. , other than the fact that they can both present as viral infections (but COVID-19 can affect other organs in the body).

“Research has found that more than one in 3 patients exhibited one or more characteristics of long-COVID recorded between 3 and 6 months after a diagnosis of COVID-19,” the study said. “It was significantly higher than after the flu.”

This reinforces arguments that some experts have argued for so long that COVID-19 presents a huge problem and – at least so far – for the most part unexamined, and that unvaccinated children who contract the disease can experience it. the effects over the years to come.

One of these experts is Kevin Kavanagh, MD, member of Infection control today^®‘s (TIC^®‘s) Editorial Advisory Board which, in a viewpoint released on Monday, forcefully described the differences between COVID-19 and influenza. “Unlike the flu, SARS-CoV-2 uses ACE2 receptors to infiltrate cells,” Kavanagh wrote. “Similar to HIV, SARS-CoV-2 can spread silently throughout the host’s body and attack almost any organ.”

The PLOS Medicine The study states that “the fact that the risk is higher after COVID-19 than after influenza suggests that their origin could, in part, directly involve infection with SARS-CoV-2 and is not only a general consequence of viral infection “.

To reach this conclusion, researchers at the University of Oxford, the National Institute for Health Research and the Oxford Health Biomedical Research Center, examined data from 273,618 patients who had been diagnosed with COVID-19. The scan was conducted on July 18, 2021, and patients were diagnosed with COVID-19 by December 16, 2020.

As TIC^®sister publication of s, Contagion^®, reported that pharmaceutical companies are interested in developing a vaccine for children aged 5 to <12 years. The PLOS Medicine the data suggest that such a vaccine is needed. The study states that “it is noteworthy that long-lasting features of COVID have also been recorded in children and young adults, and in more than half of out-patients, confirming that they occur even in young people and those who had a relatively mild illness…. This is important in terms of public health, given that most people with COVID-19 belong to the latter group. It is also interesting to note that almost 40% of patients with long-lasting symptoms of COVID recorded between 3 and 6 months had not had such a diagnosis in the first 3 months. Part of this may reflect a delayed presentation, but also suggests that some patients may have a delayed onset of the features of COVID long. “

Kavanagh warned that COVID-19 “affects children and children can be affected in the long term. The idea of ​​focusing on the dead is absolutely ridiculous. I know patient after patient and my friends have been affected as well. They develop long COVIDs. And I’m talking about arrhythmias, chronic coughs. One has hair that falls out two to three months after infection. It’s not good. This causes heart disease, myocarditis, vasculitis in a number of patients. “

He added, “I have to ask you this. Do you really want to have our children as guinea pigs to find out what the Delta variant will do? Because let’s face it, we are facing a virus that is more contagious, more deadly and more likely to affect young people.

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. Kavanagh had warned of the global effects of COVID-19 in a TIC^® article from February 27, 2020.

When in May 2020, there was talk of ending lockdowns and lifting mitigation efforts due to the decline in COVID-19 infections, Kavanagh warned against going too fast.

On May 28, 2020, Kavanagh declared TIC^® that “what worries me the most about reopening is that people are going to say, ‘Oh, it’s over’ and don’t do any kind of protection, whether it’s social distancing, wearing masks, do not gather in crowds. I really think people are going to think, ‘Well, we’ve got this beat. So, we’re going to go out and have a great time over Memorial Day weekend. And I think that’s the most dangerous thing.