Childhood short-sightedness rise linked to lockdowns

Increasing time spent indoors during the COVID-19 pandemic may have caused a significant rise in childhood short-sightedness (known as myopia), according to a new Hong Kong study. Published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, the findings were based on the ongoing Hong Kong Children Eye Study, which continually researches the eye conditions of 6 to 8-year-olds. The study found that one in five (19.5 per cent) of the 709 children recruited at the start of the pandemic (between December 2019 xxxx to January 2020) developed short-sightedness over the course of eight months. Screentime among the children drastically increased during this period also, from 2.5 hours a day, to 7 hours.