Covid pandemic effects on the physical fitness of primary school children
- BackgroundIn spring of 2020, the Sars-CoV-2 incidence rate increased rapidly in Germany and around the world. Throughout the next 2 years, schools were temporarily closed and social distancing measures were put in place to slow the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Did these social restrictions and temporary school lockdowns affect children's physical fitness? The EMOTIKON project annually tests the physical fitness of all third-graders in the Federal State of Brandenburg, Germany. The tests assess cardiorespiratory endurance (6-min-run test), coordination (star-run test), speed (20-m sprint test), lower (powerLOW, standing long jump test), and upper (powerUP, ball-push test) limbs muscle power, and static balance (one-legged stance test with eyes closed). A total of 125,893 children were tested in the falls from 2016 to 2022. Primary analyses focused on 98,510 keyage third-graders (i.e., school enrollment according to the legal key date, aged 8 to 9 years) from 515 schools. Secondary analyses included 27,383 older-than-keyageBackgroundIn spring of 2020, the Sars-CoV-2 incidence rate increased rapidly in Germany and around the world. Throughout the next 2 years, schools were temporarily closed and social distancing measures were put in place to slow the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Did these social restrictions and temporary school lockdowns affect children's physical fitness? The EMOTIKON project annually tests the physical fitness of all third-graders in the Federal State of Brandenburg, Germany. The tests assess cardiorespiratory endurance (6-min-run test), coordination (star-run test), speed (20-m sprint test), lower (powerLOW, standing long jump test), and upper (powerUP, ball-push test) limbs muscle power, and static balance (one-legged stance test with eyes closed). A total of 125,893 children were tested in the falls from 2016 to 2022. Primary analyses focused on 98,510 keyage third-graders (i.e., school enrollment according to the legal key date, aged 8 to 9 years) from 515 schools. Secondary analyses included 27,383 older-than-keyage third-graders (i.e., OTK, delayed school enrollment or repetition of a grade, aged 9 to 10 years), who have been shown to exhibit lower physical fitness than expected for their age. Linear mixed models fitted pre-pandemic quadratic secular trends, and took into account differences between children and schools.ResultsThird-graders exhibited lower cardiorespiratory endurance, coordination, speed and powerUP in the Covid pandemic cohorts (2020-2022) compared to the pre-pandemic cohorts (2016-2019). Children's powerLOW and static balance were higher in the pandemic cohorts compared to the pre-pandemic cohorts. From 2020 to 2021, coordination, powerLOW and powerUP further declined. Evidence for some post-pandemic physical fitness catch-up was restricted to powerUP. Cohen's |ds| for comparisons of the pandemic cohorts 2020-2022 with pre-pandemic cohorts 2016-2019 ranged from 0.02 for powerLOW to 0.15 for coordination. Within the pandemic cohorts, keyage children exhibited developmental losses ranging from approximately 1 month for speed to 5 months for cardiorespiratory endurance. For powerLOW and static balance, the positive pandemic effects translate to developmental gains of 1 and 7 months, respectively. Pre-pandemic secular trends may account for some of the observed differences between pandemic and pre-pandemic cohorts, especially in powerLOW, powerUP and static balance. The pandemic further increased developmental delays of OTK children in cardiorespiratory endurance, powerUP and balance.ConclusionsThe Covid-19 pandemic was associated with declines in several physical fitness components in German third-graders. Pandemic effects are still visible in 2022. Health-related interventions should specifically target those physical fitness components that were negatively affected by the pandemic (cardiorespiratory endurance, coordination, speed).…
Verfasserangaben: | Paula TeichORCiD, Thea Heidi FühnerORCiDGND, Florian BaehrORCiD, Christian PutaORCiDGND, Urs GranacherORCiDGND, Reinhold KlieglORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1186/s40798-023-00624-1 |
ISSN: | 2198-9761 |
Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37578660 |
Titel des übergeordneten Werks (Englisch): | Sports Medicine - Open |
Untertitel (Englisch): | results of the german EMOTIKON project |
Verlag: | Springer |
Verlagsort: | New York |
Publikationstyp: | Wissenschaftlicher Artikel |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Datum der Erstveröffentlichung: | 14.08.2023 |
Erscheinungsjahr: | 2023 |
Datum der Freischaltung: | 24.06.2024 |
Freies Schlagwort / Tag: | Cardiorespiratory endurance; Cohort study; EMOTIKON; Linear mixed models; Muscle power; Physical fitness; Sars-CoV-2; Youth |
Band: | 9 |
Ausgabe: | 1 |
Aufsatznummer: | 77 |
Seitenanzahl: | 19 |
Organisationseinheiten: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Sport- und Gesundheitswissenschaften |
DDC-Klassifikation: | 6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 61 Medizin und Gesundheit / 610 Medizin und Gesundheit |
7 Künste und Unterhaltung / 79 Sport, Spiele, Unterhaltung / 796 Sportarten, Sportspiele | |
Peer Review: | Referiert |
Fördermittelquelle: | Publikationsfonds der Universität Potsdam |
Publikationsweg: | Open Access / Gold Open-Access |
DOAJ gelistet | |
Lizenz (Deutsch): | ![]() |