Fears for healthy kids in need of care as parents fight Covid

Hospitals are bracing for a rise in the number of healthy children left in need of care as their critically ill parents battle Covid.

Health and welfare authorities are bracing for a rising number of children needing care while their parents are in hospital fighting Covid.

A Melbourne private hospital has already set up a ward for children, even though they do not have Covid symptoms requiring specialist medical attention.

Because parents and other carers with serious cases have had to be hospitalised – and the children do not have other family members who can care for them due to transmission concerns – the Department of Health organised a “stop gap” arrangement with a suburban private hospital.

The Herald Sun understands longer-term arrangements are established in line with projections of a steep rise in demand to house infected and non-infected children, based on the number of critically ill parents in Sydney’s outbreak.

Authorities are bracing for a rising number of children needing care while their parents are in hospital fighting serious cases of Covid. Picture: David Caird

A department spokesman confirmed Northern Health was overseeing care for unaccompanied minors whose parents are being treated in hospital for coronavirus.

“These children are asymptomatic but require a safe place to stay, as they may not have other family members who can care for them,” he said.

In better news, the latest research into long Covid-19 reveals that symptoms rarely last more than 12 weeks in children and teens.

The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute reviewed 14 international studies involving nearly 20,000 children to help guide policy about vaccinating children against Covid-19.

It found the most common ailments were headache, fatigue, sleep disturbance, concentration difficulties and abdominal pain, but said more research was needed.

Royal Children’s Hospital head of infectious diseases Nigel Curtis said it was reassuring that there was little evidence that symptoms persisted longer than 12 weeks.

“The low risk posed by acute disease means one of the key benefits of Covid vaccination of children and adolescents might be to protect them from long Covid,” he said.

“An accurate determination of the risk of long Covid in this age group is therefore crucial in the debate about the risks and benefits of vaccination.”

Although clinical trials in younger children are under way there is no vaccine yet approved in Australia, the US or Europe for those under 12. Picture: AFP

Children aged over 12 are able to get a Covid-19 vaccine but no vaccine is yet approved in Australia, the US and Europe for those under 12.

MCRI Covid-19 Governance Group co-chairman Andrew Steer said it was important to understand whether co-infection with other conditions such as Respiratory Syncytial Virus or influenza increased disease severity in young people.

The review, published in the Paediatric Infectious Disease Journal, found more than 200 symptoms attributed to long Covid. Many were non-specific and highly prevalent in the general population, including fatigue, sleep disturbance, concentration difficulties, loss of appetite, and muscle or joint pain.

While it found some studies were weak because they lacked control groups and relied on self-reporting of symptoms, one did detect a difference between Covid-infected and those without the virus who still had symptoms four weeks after catching the virus.

The study reported that by eight weeks, most symptoms had resolved, “suggesting long Covid might be less of a concern in children and adolescents than in adults”.

“Interestingly in one study, more than half of adolescents in the uninfected control group reported symptoms at 12 weeks despite only 8 per cent reporting symptoms at the time of testing for SARS-CoV-2,” the report says.