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Covid Pandemic Effects on the Physical Fitness of Primary School Children: Results of the German EMOTIKON Project

BACKGROUND: In 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 te...

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Autores principales: Teich, Paula, Fühner, Thea, Bähr, Florian, Puta, Christian, Granacher, Urs, Kliegl, Reinhold
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10425322/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37578660
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40798-023-00624-1
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author Teich, Paula
Fühner, Thea
Bähr, Florian
Puta, Christian
Granacher, Urs
Kliegl, Reinhold
author_facet Teich, Paula
Fühner, Thea
Bähr, Florian
Puta, Christian
Granacher, Urs
Kliegl, Reinhold
author_sort Teich, Paula
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In 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. RESULTS: Third-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. CONCLUSIONS: The 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). SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40798-023-00624-1.
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spelling pubmed-104253222023-08-16 Covid Pandemic Effects on the Physical Fitness of Primary School Children: Results of the German EMOTIKON Project Teich, Paula Fühner, Thea Bähr, Florian Puta, Christian Granacher, Urs Kliegl, Reinhold Sports Med Open Original Research Article BACKGROUND: In 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. RESULTS: Third-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. CONCLUSIONS: The 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). SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40798-023-00624-1. Springer International Publishing 2023-08-14 /pmc/articles/PMC10425322/ /pubmed/37578660 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40798-023-00624-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Original Research Article
Teich, Paula
Fühner, Thea
Bähr, Florian
Puta, Christian
Granacher, Urs
Kliegl, Reinhold
Covid Pandemic Effects on the Physical Fitness of Primary School Children: Results of the German EMOTIKON Project
title Covid Pandemic Effects on the Physical Fitness of Primary School Children: Results of the German EMOTIKON Project
title_full Covid Pandemic Effects on the Physical Fitness of Primary School Children: Results of the German EMOTIKON Project
title_fullStr Covid Pandemic Effects on the Physical Fitness of Primary School Children: Results of the German EMOTIKON Project
title_full_unstemmed Covid Pandemic Effects on the Physical Fitness of Primary School Children: Results of the German EMOTIKON Project
title_short Covid Pandemic Effects on the Physical Fitness of Primary School Children: Results of the German EMOTIKON Project
title_sort covid pandemic effects on the physical fitness of primary school children: results of the german emotikon project
topic Original Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10425322/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37578660
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40798-023-00624-1
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