Covid-19 lockdowns may have slowed babies’ development but impact is likely reversible, study shows

Covid-19 lockdowns may have impeded the development of babies’ social and communication skills including waving and pointing — but not irreversibly, according to an study published in the medical journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Some 309 babies in Ireland were tracked as part of the “Impact of Coronavirus Pandemic on Allergic and Autoimmune Dysregulation in Infants Born During Lockdown (Coral)” study. They were all been born during the first three months of the pandemic, between March and May 2020, in Ireland.

It was a time when mass lockdowns and mask-wearing were the order of the day, limiting babies’ interactions with people outside the home and potentially restricting their access to visual and facial cues for language development.

To gauge the potential impact these measures might have had, the researchers assessed ten developmental outcomes for the “pandemic babies” at 12 months of age.

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The ten developmental milestones included the ability to crawl; sidestep along furniture; stand alone; pick up tiny objects with a thumb and index finger; stack bricks; finger-feed; know their own name; express one definite and meaningful word; point at objects; and wave “bye-bye”.

These outcomes were compared a year after birth with those of 1,629 infants from a baseline study of babies born in Ireland between 2008 and 2011.

Researchers noted fewer developmental milestones were met during the first year of life by pandemic babies, as reported by the babies’ parents.

Coral study infants were less likely to have one definite and meaningful word by the age of 12 months, less likely to be able to point, and less likely to be able to wave bye-bye.

They were still more likely to be crawling at the age of 12 months than their baseline study counterparts, however, which might be because they were more likely to have spent more time at home and on the ground rather than out of the home in cars and strollers, suggest the researchers.

In a bid to explain the other findings, the researchers suggest that lockdown measures may have reduced the repertoire of language heard and the sight of unmasked faces speaking to them, while also curtailing opportunities to encounter new items of interest, which might prompt pointing, and the frequency of social contacts to enable them to learn to wave bye-bye.

Research author Dr Susan Byrne of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland said the study came with a number of caveats: “As an observational study, no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect. The two groups weren’t exactly the same and the findings relied on parental recall,” she said.

She said that while “pandemic-associated social isolation appears to have impacted on social communication skills in babies born during the pandemic compared with a historical cohort”, babies were resilient and it was likely that with societal re-emergence and increase in social circles, pandemic babies’ social communication skills will improve.

Dr Byrne said the results of further investigations, which assessed the babies at 24 months, were due to be released in coming months and would likely provide more clarity on the impact of Covid-19 lockdowns on the cohort.

The study’s principal investigator is Professor Jonathan Hourihane from Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) at Temple Street and RCSI’s Department of Paediatrics It is a joint initiative with APC Centre in University College Cork, with babies recruited from the Rotunda and Coombe hospitals. It is co-funded by the Children’s Health Foundation and the Clemens von Pirquet Foundation, a European allergy charity.

Archives of Disease in Childhood is one of 70 specialist journals published by BMJ. The title is co-owned with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.