MedNewsToday More common among girls and women.
Long COVID in the U.S. is rare among children and has affected roughly one in 14 adults, according to a pair of data briefs from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
Overall, in 2022, an estimated 1.3% of children in the U.S. ever had long COVID, and 0.5% currently had long COVID, reported Anjel Vahratian, PhD, MPH, of the NCHS, and colleagues.
As for adults, an estimated 6.9% ever had long COVID and 3.4% currently had long COVID that year, said Dzifa Adjaye-Gbewonyo, PhD, MPH, of the NCHS, and colleagues.
Both reports were based on analyses of data from the National Health Interview Survey, totaling 27,651 adults and 7,464 children (based on parental interviews). Long COVID was defined as the presence of symptoms for at least 3 months after having COVID among those with either a positive test or a doctor’s diagnosis of COVID.
The adult findings generally align with earlier CDC data, which showed that the prevalence of long COVID fell from 7.5% in early June 2022 to 6.0% in mid-June 2023. Those estimates were based on an analysis of the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, a nationally representative sample.
“While more than 90% of children ages 0-17 have been exposed to COVID-19, long COVID remains rare, especially in children younger than 12 years,” Vahratian and colleagues wrote. They noted that data from the Nationwide Commercial Laboratory Seroprevalence Survey show that as of December 2022, nearly 92% of children had antibodies indicating a previous COVID infection.