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long-term health risks to children rise as covid surges in alta.
children between the ages of five and 11 currently have the highest rate of infection of any age group in the province.
oct 1 2021
5 minute read
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by: blair mcbride
keaton louttit, 13, caught the uk variant of covid-19 in april, pummeling him with three days of high fevers, tiredness and intense headaches.
after 10 days, most symptoms disappeared except the fatigue that has dogged him ever since.
“i used to be way more energetic and involved with things like family walks,” he told postmedia. “now i won’t do them because i’m just too tired. sometimes i don’t feel like hanging out with my friends because i’m just so tired.”
he was vaccinated in july, however that didn’t alleviate his fatigue.
“i zone out in class (at school). i wouldn’t realize what we just did in the lesson,” he said.
his family doctor told keaton’s mother katie louttit that his condition is very similar to what some adult patients are experiencing months after their covid diagnosis. the lingering headaches, insomnia, weakness and memory loss can last months and have come to be known as long covid.
“(the doctor’s) concerned about his mental health,” said katie. “she set up some counselling with the edmonton covid-19 rapid response collaborative. it’s so heartbreaking to see him not being himself anymore.”
as covid-19 infections continue to break records in alberta, some medical experts worry about the future health impacts on young residents like keaton.
rising covid infections among children
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new cases in children aged 0 to nine have been rising weekly since mid-july, according to alberta health data. there were 31 cases in that age group the week of july 12-18, then they increased to 90 the following week and have been going up ever since. infections for that age group have exceeded 1,100 cases each week starting the sept. 6 to 12 period.
for the sept. 22 to 28 period — the most recent data available — there were 1,821 cases in kids 0-9, with 1,224 in the age five to nine bracket.
children between the ages of five and 11 currently have the highest rate of infection, on a rolling seven-day average, of all age groups in alberta, with 68.57 cases per 100,000 population.
hospitalizations are lower than infections, and 54 children aged 0-9 have been sent to hospital since mid-july, with eight icu admissions. there were 34 hospitalizations in september alone.
numbers expected to rise
fifty-four children sent to hospital is 54 too many, said dr. tehseen ladha, a pediatrician and assistant professor in the pediatrics department at the university of alberta.
“it’s just not acceptable,” she said. “(covid-19) can be mitigated with simple public health measures. we don’t accept 54 children being hospitalized for measles because they’re not supposed to get measles. being hospitalized for a child is traumatic for them and their family and we don’t yet know the long-term effects (of covid).”
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ladha fears hospitalizations will increase, considering children under 12 can’t yet be vaccinated and contact tracing and isolation of contacts were suspended by the provincial government in the summer.
edmonton public schools has implemented its own measures such as mandatory masking and notifying parents of positive covid cases in classrooms.
the edmonton public school board (epsb), in urging the government to reintroduce contact tracing, reported on this week that there have been covid outbreaks at 12 of its schools. in an update on its website thursday, it said there were 631 self-reported coronavirus cases, a number it fears is actually higher.
threat of post-covid complications
as cases rise, ladha worries about what will happen weeks after children’s covid diagnoses.
“to diagnose long covid you need to know they had covid, which is hard because sometimes they’re asymptomatic. i don’t think there’s any deliberate collection on the numbers of these patients (in alberta),” she said. “we’re relying on (international) studies that have been collecting this data.”
the studies show a range of prevalence with long covid.
on the high end, data released by the united kingdom’s office of national statistics in april found a rate of 9.8 per cent among children aged two to 11, and 13 per cent for kids 12 to 16 who had at least one lingering symptom five weeks after a positive covid diagnosis.
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on the lower end, a preprint study in the u.k. in may showed that of 1,700 schoolchildren who tested positive for covid, 4.4 per cent experienced headache, fatigue and loss of smell for at least four weeks; and 1.6 per cent had symptoms for at least eight weeks.
multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (mis-c) can show up one or two months after a covid infection and causes high fevers and potential inflammation of internal organs.
ladha hasn’t seen mis-c cases in her own practice because she works mainly in out-patient clinics, but she cited research published this year in the european review for medical and pharmacological sciences showing a mis-c prevalence of 6.2 per cent in hospitalized patients in china.
another study, published in the new england journal of medicine in 2020 showed a far lower rate of 2.1 cases per 100,000 in the study sample in new york state. mis-c was found to be higher among black children aged six to 12.
mis-c is treatable in the hospital and the death rate is low, ladha said. the problem is dealing with mis-c amid a surge of covid patients in hospitals.
“we’ve redeployed pediatric staff to the adult icus so they can take care of the covid patients. if we continue to let covid run through children we’ll see increased rates of mis-c (and) increased numbers of kids in hospital and icu. if mis-c rises we’ll be really strapped for capacity.”
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there are 45 pediatric icu (picu) beds split between edmonton and calgary, said alberta health services spokesperson kerry williamson. twenty-seven are currently occupied. for adults, there are 373 icu beds, including 200 surge spaces.
ladha stresses that it’s time to bring back safety controls to reduce community spread and infections among children.
“do we want to risk our pediatric population and see if 10 per cent get long-term debilitating symptoms? or do we want to put in measures to prevent more spread?”
light at the end of the tunnel
malgorzata gasperowicz, a general associate in the faculty of nursing at the university of calgary and a developmental biologist thinks that vaccines for children under 12 hold out hope, but they should be rolled out alongside public health measures to maximize protection.
pfizer announced on sept. 20 that its vaccine for kids aged five to 11 is effective and it hopes to start the jabs by late october.
as a model that alberta could follow, gasperowicz pointed to the atlantic provinces, where closed borders, mandatory quarantines and lockdowns slowed the spread of covid while infections and hospitalizations were higher in the rest of canada.
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“their restrictions protected the whole population including children, and with hospitalizations and deaths, the atlantic provinces had very low numbers,” gasperowicz said. “prince edward island is testing more per capita than we are. they can track it and quickly stamp it out.”
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