Lauterbach warns of Long-Covid in children - the pediatrician paints a different picture

Corona long-term consequences also affect the youngest, warns the SPD health expert.

What a pediatrician now reports from his everyday work sounds different.

Berlin - "The numbers are still from the lower end": Karl Lauterbach continues to warn of "Long Covid" in children. Seven percent of the young infected developed symptoms - that was "no small matter" the SPD health expert had said in a talk with Maybrit Illner (ARD). When

asked by

, he then explained where he gets his numbers from: "They refer to studies by the British Office for National Statistics like a large Italian study that even calculated 12 percent long-term consequences for children who were infected with Covid-19 . "

"Long Covid" refers to the persistent occurrence of symptoms such as exhaustion and breathing problems after a corona infection.

RKI boss Lothar Wieler recently pointed out the dangers for children in a joint press conference with Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU).

Corona long-term consequences in children: paediatricians weigh down

But Lauterbach may be exaggerating, the tabloid is now provocatively asking - and asking pediatricians.

“You have to look with a very, very large magnifying glass to find Long Covid cases

to be discovered in children, ”she quotes Jakob Maske, spokesman for the professional association of paediatricians (BVKJ).

"We do not care for a single child with long-term consequences from a Covid disease," he says of his own practice in Berlin.

According to the

,

another clinic doctor has seen

a single suspected case since the beginning of the pandemic - “and in the end we weren't even sure whether the child's exhaustion was more of a post-shutdown consequence, i.e. a psychological consequence of the lockdown. "

RKI numbers on Covid-19 in children: Already more than 200,000 cases in under 14-year-olds

Nevertheless: According to the RKI dashboard (as of May 8), a total of 213,473 Covid-19 cases have been recorded among under-14s. Let's assume that seven percent of them develop long-term consequences, as Lauterbach warns - then that would be 14,943 children. “Compared to the care situation in adults after surviving an infection, pediatrics is not yet prepared for this,” Markus Hufnagel from the Center for Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine at the Freiburg University Clinic

warned

the

at the end of March

. At that time, the number of infections among adolescents and children rose noticeably.

Hufnagel did not mention the percentage of affected children at the time, but explained: “The clinical picture is very variable.” These include chronic exhaustion, general reduced performance and joint and muscle pain, but also skin changes. Since corona vaccines have not yet been approved for children and adolescents, they are among the groups that will be susceptible to the virus for a while.