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The 11-year-old is one of the 1.3 million long Covid sufferers that struggle with daily symptoms, including severe fatigue. “She’s missed out on an awful lot,” Binita said about her daughter, who had to start using a wheelchair as she couldn’t walk long distances anymore. It all started with only a “mild illness”.
The doctor said: “Her initial illness was in January 2021 and like a lot of kids at that time she just had a fairly mild initial illness.
“She just never really fully recovered from that initial infection; she was left quite fatigued.
“Then a few weeks after, she developed this very severe abdominal pain and I had to rush her into hospital but she had all the tests done and they couldn’t find anything and that sort of grumbled on for a few weeks.”
This was 16 months ago now and little Jasmin is still left with persisting, stubborn symptoms that affect her daily life.
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Binita said: “It wasn’t until she went back to school in March after the lockdown ended that we really began to notice because she couldn’t really cope with doing full days.
“Then after struggling through a couple of weeks, she’d end up crashing and that would just be a worsening of all the symptoms of fatigue, sore throats.
“This went on for a little while until the Easter, when she was really poorly, and that’s when we kind of thought this isn’t just a prolonged recovery this is something not right.”
According to the NHS, long Covid is associated with a myriad of symptoms and your chances of this long-term condition aren’t linked to the initial illness and its severity.
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In Jasmin’s case, her persisting coronavirus symptoms are:
- “Severe” fatigue
- Aches and pain in her legs and ankles
- Tinnitus (ringing in her ears)
- Sore throat
- Abdominal pain.
Symptoms like these are affecting her daily tasks, whether that’s school or spending time with her friends.
Binita said: “It wasn’t until January of this year that she agreed to buy the wheelchair because we just couldn’t do any sort of thing that involved distance walking without it.
“So, she can’t walk any distance and really can’t go to school.
“She’s missed out on an awful lot of stuff with her friends – just what normal 11-year-olds do, having sleepovers, birthday parties.
“It’s quite a lonely existence for these children and they’re sort of shut away behind closed doors a lot of the time.”
After getting her standard long Covid tests done in the UK, Binita decided to take her daughter to Germany to see if there were “more tests available”.
Her bloodwork done abroad found very hyperactivated sticky platelets and micro clots.
Binita wrote in a Twitter post: “The platelets and micro clots show that her blood is ‘hypercoagulable’ – too sticky.
“These may be blocking up the very small blood vessels that allow oxygen into muscles and nerves, which could explain some of her symptoms [like] ‘fatigue’.”
The mum told Express.co.uk about the findings: “I don’t think what we’ve found in her will necessarily be what we find in every single child but it’s certainly part of the puzzle.”
Based on these findings, Jasmin started a new treatment which brought a great improvement in her energy levels, school attendance, appetite and even mood.
Binita refused to share the exact medications as she doesn’t want people taking products with possible side effects without talking to their doctors first.
But she is now calling for greater awareness, urgency and research in the UK so the tests and treatment for children suffering from long Covid can see an improvement.
