To date, there have been more than 800 million confirmed cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV 2) infection globally, including 6.9 million deaths.1 Numerous reports have detailed neuropsychiatric sequelae of COVID-19 infection, including cognitive impairment, depression, and anxiety. There have also been several reports describing catatonia in the setting of COVID-19 infection. However, these reports have primarily been described in adults and have been associated with the acute phase of COVID-19 infection.2 There are limited but growing reports of catatonia associated with acute COVID-19 infection in pediatric patients3–5 and in the post-acute phase of COVID-19 infection in adults.6–8 Varying definitions of “post-acute” or “post–COVID-19” conditions led the World Health Organization (WHO) to issue a clinical case definition for a post–COVID-19 condition in children, which can be summarized as symptoms causing functional impairment that initially occurred within 3 months of confirmed or probable SARS-CoV 2 infection and that have lasted at least 2 months.9 We present a case of catatonia in a young pediatric patient associated with the post-acute phase of SARS-CoV-2 infection.
