For kids with long COVID, "back to school" often means not returning at all

For kids with long COVID, "back to school" often means not returning at all
Far from rare, long COVID in kids is devastating families. Experts say schools can do more to help their students

By Nicole Karlis
Senior Writer
Published October 6, 2024 9:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) In January 2022, Jennifer Robertson’s now 11-year-old son, Fergus, developed long COVID, a condition in which the symptoms of COVID-19 linger for months or even years. Due to his symptoms, he missed nearly six weeks of school after his first infection. He’d be in and out of the classroom for the rest of the school year.

Robertson never knew how her son would feel day to day. After three months of daily fever spikes, red eyes, and chest pains, the family pulled him out of their school to be homeschooled for a year. There was hope when he returned to in-person school last year at a private, and more flexible, school.

But then he caught the virus, again. This year, as many kids returned to school, Fergus returned to home education. Robertson told Salon in a phone interview that this is to “both to catch him up on things that he needed help with or missed and to try to avoid the non-stop repeat infections that come from school."

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Robertson and her family are based in the United Kingdom, but the lack of coronavirus protections in educational settings follow an international trend. In 2022, schools across the United States started to relax their masking policies, making them “optional.” Today, seeing a kid wearing a mask in class is a rarity. ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/10/06/for-kids-with-long-covid-back-to-school-often-means-not-returning-at-all/