Ka Wai Kam of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and colleagues from Australia and Hong Kong conducted a cross-sectional study and found that the incidence and severity of astigmatism in children, regardless of myopia, increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis included 21,655 Hong Kong schoolchildren aged 6–8 years (mean age 7.31 years; 52.9 percent boys) who underwent modern ophthalmological examinations at two academic medical centers from 2015 to 2023. The results were published in JAMA Ophthalmology.
The incidence rates of refractive and corneal astigmatism of one diopter or higher increased from 21.4 and 59.8 percent to 37.4 and 64.7 percent, respectively, between 2015 and 2022–2023. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the risk of developing refractive astigmatism increased by 20 percent, corneal astigmatism by 26 percent, the degree of refractive astigmatism by 0.04 diopters, and the degree of corneal astigmatism by 0.05 diopters (all p < 0.001) compared with pre-pandemic levels, adjusted for sociodemographic factors, parental astigmatism, and the presence of myopia in the child.
