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Limited long COVID symptoms in children does not mean no vaccinations

How sick does the COVID-19 Delta strain make children? Answers from The Royal Children’s Hospital - ABC Radio Melbourne

Dr Sarah McNab, Director of General Medicine at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, has spent the pandemic observing the impacts of COVID-19 in children.

Looking at 170 children infected with the virus last year, Dr McNab came to a surprisingly promising conclusion — there were no signs of ongoing health issues, sometimes described as “long-COVID”, despite the infection.

“Covid is a terrible illness in adults, and particularly in the elderly, but in children we’ve seen very mild illnesses, and the vast majority of children with coronavirus, including Delta, are doing really well,” she told Raf Epstein on Drive.

However, Dr McNab cautioned that the finding does not mean there isn’t a need to vaccinate them.

“I’ll certainly be vaccinating my children as soon as they are eligible… and I’ll be encouraging all parents to immunize their children,” she said.

“We vaccinate against other things that are reasonable mild illnesses in children, things like chicken pox, things like the flu, because we know occasionally, rarely, they can be pretty bad.”


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