-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email In January 2022, Jennifer Robertson’s now 11-year-old son, Fergus, developed long COVID , a condition in which the symptoms of COVID-19 linger for months or even years. Due to his symptoms, he missed nearly six weeks of school after his first infection. He’d be in and out of the classroom for the rest of the school year.
Robertson never knew how her son would feel day to day. After three months of daily fever spikes, red eyes, and chest pains, the family pulled him out of their school to be homeschooled for a year. There was hope when he returned to in-person school last year at a private, and more flexible, school.
But then he caught the virus, again. This year, as many kids returned to school, Fergus returned to home education. Robertson told Salon in a phone interview that this is to “both to catch him up on things that he needed help with or missed and to try to avoid the non-stop repeat infections that come from school.
" But additionally, the lack of COVID-19 precautions in schools is a deterring factor to sending him in-person. “We feel we will never heal from this as long as schools have no ventilation, open windows, air purifiers, and policies that children and staff can come to school while actively positive with COVID," Robertson said, adding that she and her family feel “forgotten” as the 2024 school year begins. Related Long COVID is debilitating children.
Doctors worry there aren’t enough centers to treat them.