Analysis of long-term outcomes of infections among children in England

Many different viral and bacterial infections besides SARS-CoV-2 can cause lingering health effects in children and young people. It is not clear if the reasons for developing long-term health effects from other infections are similar or different to long-COVID. It is also not known what the different healthcare needs are.

This project, “Analysis of long-term outcomes of infections among children in England”, will use data that have already been collected from the nationwide Covid-19 Schools Infection Survey (SIS) for England.

Aims

De-identified data on acute fever (as a “marker” for infection) and other symptoms from SIS, as well as de-identified electronic health record data for SIS participants, will be used to understand the association of infections with long-term health outcomes in children.

Learning from SIS will then be applied to all children in England to understand the risk, number affected, and associated cost of long-term effects following acute fever compared to after SARS-CoV-2 infection among children and young people in England as a whole.

This research will compare the healthcare trajectory of long-COVID versus that of other fever-causing infections.

We will quantify the healthcare requirements and cost for planning purposes.

We will be able to identify which groups of children and young people are most at risk of long-term effects of infections to inform clinical management.

Partners and funder

The project is part of the Data and Connectivity National Core Study, led by Health Data Research UK in partnership with the Office for National Statistics and funded by UK Research and Innovation.

Funding for the analyses has been secured in the form of a National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Advanced Fellowship (reference NIHR302934).

The project sponsor is the University of Bristol. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.