Children and COVID-19 Research Library

School closures in spring 2020 caused by the COVID-19 pandemic were an unprecedented and drastic event for students, parents, and teachers. The unplanned adaptation of classroom instruction to emergency distance learning was necessary to ensure continued education. In this new learning environment, teachers formed expectations for student academic achievement gains, which in turn affected the opportunities for students to learn. Parents faced new challenges in supporting their children’s learning. According to parenting stress models, such drastic events can be a stress factor for parents, which in turn affects their children’s adjustment. This study analyzed the extent to which parents and teachers affected the perceptions of students in compulsory school toward distance learning through processes at home (individual level) and at the class level with data from multiple informants. On an individual level, the relationship between parents’ perceived threat of COVID-19 and their stress due to distance learning and students’ perceived threat of COVID-19 and their perception of distance learning were examined. Students’ learning behavior was accounted for as a variable related to their perception of distance learning. At the class level, the explanatory character of teacher expectations and class-aggregated achievement gains were examined. Data on students in grades 4 to 8, parents, and teachers in Switzerland were collected with standardized online questionnaires after the period of school closures.

Children can experience SARS-CoV-2 postviral syndromes, but it is unclear to what extent these individuals are affected by long COVID. Evidence is predominantly limited to select populations without control groups,1-4 which does not allow estimating the overall prevalence and burden in a general pediatric population. This study compared symptoms compatible with long COVID in children and adolescents (hereafter “children”) reported within 6 months after SARS-CoV-2 serologic testing. Ciao Corona is a longitudinal cohort study investigating SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in 55 randomly selected schools in the canton of Zurich in Switzerland,5,6 which has a linguistically and ethnically diverse population of 1.5 million residents in urban and rural settings. Schools were selected randomly from the 12 cantonal districts, with number of schools proportional to population size. In Switzerland, children attended schools in person (with protective measures) in 2020-2021, except during a 6-week nationwide lockdown (March 16 to May 10, 2020).

This study aimed to document the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on regions within a European country. Parents arriving at two pediatric emergency departments (EDs) in North of Switzerland and two in South of Switzerland completed an online survey during the first peak of the pandemic (April–June 2020). They were asked to rate their concern about their children or themselves having COVID-19.

The present study aimed to assess various stressful situations and the psychological impact of the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdown among youths in Switzerland. It included samples of 1627 young adults aged 19–24 from the Swiss Youth Epidemiological Study on Mental Health and 1146 children and adolescents aged 12–17 years and their parents. The study assessed symptoms of various mental health problems, internet use, and perceived stress during the first COVID-19 lockdown. In the analyses, data were weighted to be representative of the Swiss population.

This prospective cohort study aims to examine longitudinal changes in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) seroprevalence and to determine the clustering of children who were seropositive within school classes in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland from June to November 2020.