In 2023, 1.4 Percent of U.S. Children Ever Experienced Post-COVID Condition

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 12, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Post-COVID condition (PCC) continues to affect children, and 80 percent of those currently experiencing PCC have activity limitation, according to a research letter published online Feb. 3 in JAMA Pediatrics.

Nicole D. Ford, Ph.D., M.P.H., from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and colleagues used data from the 2023 National Health Interview Survey to estimate the prevalence of ever and current PCC in U.S. children aged 0 to 17 years and activity limitations among children currently experiencing PCC.

The analytic sample included 7,585 unweighted and 71,027,000 weighted children. The researchers found that about 1.4 percent of children had ever experienced PCC and an estimated 0.4 percent were currently experiencing PCC at the time of interview in 2023. The prevalence of ever and currently experiencing PCC increased with older age (2.3 and 0.8 percent at age 12 to 17 years). With decreasing family income, the prevalence of ever experiencing PCC increased (<100 percent income-to-poverty ratio, 2.6 percent). Compared with non-Hispanic Black children and children from another or multiple races, the prevalence of ever experiencing PCC was higher among Hispanic and non-Hispanic White children. There was variation in the prevalence of ever experiencing PCC by health insurance. Eighty percent of children currently experiencing PCC had any activity limitation compared with the period before they had COVID-19.

“The large proportion of children experiencing PCC with any activity limitation highlights the need to examine the severity of activity limitation, functional outcomes, and days lost from school,” the authors write.

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