Doctor about Long Covid in children

by time news

Dr. Vilser, you have a long-Covid ambulance for children in Jena. How big is the crowd there?

Lucia Schmidt

Editor in the “Life” department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

Unfortunately unbroken. It takes an average of three months to get an appointment. There are more than 50 children and young people on the waiting list.

Has the number increased?

Since the beginning of the delta wave, we have been working at the limit and simply cannot process all requests. In this respect, nothing has changed for us since then. The number cannot increase because we do not have the capacity. What we are observing is that inquiries from distant areas have become less frequent, which suggests that local care services have been established. Nobody will be able to present figures for the whole of Germany seriously.

dr  Daniel Vilser is senior physician and head of the pediatric cardiology section and pediatric emergency room at the clinic for paediatrics and adolescent medicine at the Jena University Hospital.


dr Daniel Vilser is senior physician and head of the pediatric cardiology section and pediatric emergency room at the clinic for paediatrics and adolescent medicine at the Jena University Hospital.
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Image: dpa

How was the development in terms of long Covid in children 2022?

Omicron appears not only to produce less disease severity in the acute illness, but also to make long-term symptoms less frequently. Unfortunately, the effect has meanwhile been suppressed by the extremely high number of infections. Overall, however, I am optimistic that we could see slightly falling numbers in 2023.

What are typical symptoms in children?

Fatigue symptoms, a pathological state of exhaustion, are the most common. Children and young people often complain about headaches, stomach aches and body aches as well as sleep disorders. Disorders of memory and concentration also play a major role. Rapid heartbeat, hair loss, dizziness, fever, diarrhea, loss or change in smell and taste, and weight loss also occur.

At what age is Long Covid most common?

We see children in their teens more often and also significantly more girls than boys.

Which patient story was particularly close to your heart?

I don’t want to highlight any. It gets particularly hard for me when a patient is so badly affected that he can no longer even see friends and for some reason I draw parallels to my own children.

How do you help the children?

We cannot yet fight the disease itself, only the symptoms. It is important to assess each patient individually and, above all, to evaluate and discuss their performance.

How do you feel about the future?

Long Covid will not go away any more than the virus itself. The question is, in what variations will we experience it and how quickly will we be able to establish healing approaches. What worries me above all is that the craze for savings that has been lived out in the children’s hospitals over the past few decades will continue in the years to come. This means that we have no chance of adequately caring for children and young people with complex clinical pictures.

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