Eye doctors had planned to celebrate 2020 as the year of vision (as in seeing 20/20). Instead, thanks to Covid-19, it will be known as the year that worsened the world’s vision for decades to come. Some optometrists across New Zealand are noticing a spike in children’s vision problems as we emerge from COVID-19 lockdowns. We are seeing even more new cases of nearsightedness, or myopia in children recently, and as has also been reported internationally, some children who were already nearsighted now seem to experience worsening vision at a faster-than-expected rate. Distance learning up close and personal When schools
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Archives for Covid-19
Eye health during lockdown
For many of us, living through a Covid-19 lockdown has meant many of our habits have changed and we’re spending a lot more time staring at a screen than we did before the pandemic. So this month’s blog is again reinforcing just how important it is to look after our eyes when we’re in front of computers and devices during lockdown and about giving our eyes a rest. Lockdown and tired eyes One of the more common questions our optometrists are being asked is about tired eyes, and what we can do to make eyes feeling less strained when we’re
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Covid lockdowns and myopia in children
Children’s reliance on screens during lockdown makes the battle for digital-free time even tougher Covid-19 certainly doesn’t seem to have helped the running argument in many NZ households: children demanding more screen time, parents wanting less. And it seems parents are right again: studies have drawn a link between lockdowns and childhood myopia. A study from the Chinese University of Hong Kong found the eyesight of some children who were already near-sighted worsened more quickly than expected during lockdowns, while other children developed myopia at a greater rate than optometrists had seen prior to 2020 and Covid-19 changing our worlds.
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