By Jeanne Smits, Paris correspondent Follow Jeanne
We’ve never seen anything like this. Sporty kids without any health or weight issues gained between 5 and 10 kilograms because they stopped practicing their sport. And not all have resumed any kind of physical activity.’
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July 9, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – A soon to be published long-term study involving 90 second and third-grade children in central France has revealed a spectacular decline in physical and cognitive capacities during COVID-19 lockdowns. “The numbers are catastrophic,” according to Martine Duclos, head of the sports medicine department of the University Hospital of Clermont-Ferrand and director of the National Observatory of Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviors (ONAPS).
The implications of the situation are indeed dire. Obesity and sedentarism are expected to lead to an increase in chronic diseases in this population in years to come.
The study was initiated in September 2019, months before France’s first lockdown that led to the closure of schools and “stay-at-home” orders in mid-March, 2020, giving the researchers the ability to compare “before and after” data within a stable set of youngsters in primary schools in Vichy (24,000 inhabitants) and Riom (19,000 inhabitants).
Among the most serious effects of almost two months of total lockdown for these children aged between 7 and 9 were weight gain, shortness of breath and an average loss of cognitive capacity of 40 percent between September 2019 and September 2020.