Most children recover from coronavirus within a week: Study
New Delhi : Most of the children gets cured from coronavirus symptoms within a week or rather six days to be precise, said a study done by The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health journal.
The study has been done over the data provided by parents on an application that noted first detailed description of COVID-19 illness in symptomatic school-aged children.
"It is reassuring that the number of children experiencing long-lasting symptoms of COVID-19 symptoms is low. Nevertheless, a small number of children do experience long illness with COVID-19, and our study validates the experiences of these children and their families," said Professor Emma Duncan, lead author of the study, from King's College London, UK.
The researchers noted that adults may take about four weeks to completely recover from COVID-19 symptoms, but no such thing has been seen with the children.
Many children infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus do not develop symptoms, but those who do tend to have a mild illness, they said. The latest research used data collected through the ZOE COVID Study smartphone app, which includes data from more than 250,000 UK children aged five to 17 years.
The data was collected between September 1, 2020 and February 22, 2021.
Some 1,734 children developed symptoms of COVID-19 and received a positive PCR test result close to the onset of symptoms, with their symptoms reported regularly until they were healthy again. Overall, these children were ill for an average of six days and experienced an average of three symptoms in the first week of illness, confirming that COVID-19 tends to manifest as a mild illness in children, and that they usually recover quickly, the researchers said.
However, the researchers have noted down their limitations with the study.
The symptoms could not be cross checked manually and were completely taken into consideration as mentioned by the parents, which could be inconsistent.
Also, only children who had an adult who was participating in the COVID Symptom Study were able to participate, which may bias participation towards certain demographic groups, the researchers added.
