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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Children and Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1377745
Impact of Omicron Infection on Childhood Health: The Beijing Long-COVID Study
Provisionally accepted
Bo Zhou 1
Minjun Li 2
Qi Xu 2
Shaoli Li 2 Jianhong Wang 2
Liu Junting 3 Ting Zhang 3
Xia Qu 2
Xi Wang 2 Lili Zhang 2 Xiaoli Liu 2 Jialu Gu 2 Lijun Zhou 2
Fangfang Chen 3
Xin'Nan Zong 3
Wenquan Niu 3
Lin Wang 4*- 1 Department Of Child Health Care, Children's Hospital of Capital Institute of Pediatrics, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
- 2 Children's Hospital of Capital Institute of Pediatrics, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
- 3 Capital Institute of Pediatrics, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
- 4 Department Of Child Health Care, Capital Institute of Pediatrics, Beijing, China
Purpose: The aim of this prospective study was to assess the dynamic changes of persisting symptoms among children aged 6-18 years during 1-2 months after the Omicron infection based on the modified SBQ-LC in the Tongzhou cohort, Beijing. Methods: This study includes 4 serial surveys performed within January 7-9, January 14-16, January 21-23 and February 12-14 in 2023, respectively. The prediction of age and survey for eight domains in the Rasch 0-100 linear score was undertaken by generalized additive mixed model. Results: Total 1536 children (median age: 13 years, boys: 49.9%) had completed questionnaires across 4 surveys. Information on 51 symptoms was collected, with each scored on a 4-point rating scale. Generally, the distribution of age with all domains followed the N-shaped geometry, and that of survey followed the inverse J-shaped geometry. The Rasch linear score hit the lowest level among children aged 6-8 years, and reached the peak among children aged 12-13 years. The scores of all domains sharply declined from the first to the third survey, and remained stable between the third and the fourth survey. At the fourth survey, 95.05% and 51.37% children still had one or more problems relating to breathing and mental health, respectively, and the percentage of rest six domains was reduced to less than 20%. Conclusions: Our findings indicate the multifaceted impact of Omicron infection on childhood health, especially among children aged 12-13 years. Moreover, breathing and mental health related problems still persisted during 1-to-2-month Omicron infection period.
Keywords: Omicron infection, Long Covid, Children, Symptom Burden Questionnaire, prospective cohort
Received: 28 Jan 2024; Accepted: 05 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhou, Li, Xu, Li, Wang, Junting, Zhang, Qu, Wang, Zhang, Liu, Gu, Zhou, Chen, Zong, Niu and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Lin Wang, Department Of Child Health Care, Capital Institute of Pediatrics, Beijing, China
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