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COVID-19 may have lasting effects on some children's brains

LONDON — Nia Haughton, 15, occasionally struggles to find the right words, and her memory can be patchy, but as she describes her lengthy treatment in a London hospital as she sits on a low wall beside her home, her account still has the power to shock.

In early April, the British teen had been battling a cough and a high temperature for about 10 days, but when her condition significantly deteriorated her mother, Justina Ward, called for help.

After the emergency dispatcher heard Nia having difficulty breathing, an ambulance arrived within minutes. The first emergency room to admit her swiftly recognized that her illness was both acute and complex, and transferred her to one of central London’s top children’s hospitals. Soon after her arrival there with several recognizable COVID-19 symptoms, she was sedated and placed on a ventilator inside an intensive care unit, where she remained for two weeks.

For days, her lungs labored to stave off collapse until the medical staff tried “proning” her for 16 hours a day. During proning, Nia was turned to lie on her front at a slight incline, but kept on ventilation with the help of an anesthesiologist. This approach allows oxygen to be blasted to the back of a patient’s lungs, and has been beneficial for many COVID-19 sufferers.

Eventually, Nia turned a corner and was able to breathe again unaided. But after several days in recovery, her condition worsened once again. This time, it was her brain rather than her lungs that was affected. Awake night after night, she began hallucinating, seeing and hearing people in the hospital who were not really there.

“I couldn't tell what was real,” she said. “It was really scary. I could hear voices. It was very traumatic.”

After repeated, violent seizures that left her exhausted and sleeping for long periods, she was taken back into the ICU.


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