Coronavirus pandemic contributing to ‘myopia boom’ among Hong Kong children, study finds
- More time spent on screens and less spent outdoors is contributing to higher rates of nearsightedness, Chinese University researchers say
- Study also finds incidence rate of myopia may be 2½ times higher amid pandemic, with cases progressing twice as quickly
The Chinese University study, which was released on Monday, found schoolchildren spent an average of almost seven hours a day looking at screens during the pandemic, around four hours more than before. At the same time, the average amount of time spent outdoors dropped from 1.27 hours a day to just 24 minutes.
The study’s principal investigator, Dr Jason Yam Cheuk-sing of the department of ophthalmology and visual sciences, said insufficient outdoor activities coupled with prolonged stretches of so-called near work – which included reading, writing and using electronic gadgets – corresponded with myopia progression.
“Therefore, unfortunately, our study reflects that myopia in Hong Kong’s schoolchildren has begun to boom,” Yam told a press conference on Monday.
Myopia occurs when the eyeball is too long from front to back, or when the curvature of the cornea or lens is too extreme, causing light rays to be focused in front of the retina, instead of exactly on it, leading to blurred vision when looking at objects far away.
For the study, the Chinese University researchers randomly recruited 709 children aged six to eight between December 2019 and January 2020, and then tracked their eyesight for at least eight months. The results were then compared with a control group of another 1,084 children who had been studied for three years before the pandemic, starting in 2017.
Of the 709 children, 576 did not have myopia when they were recruited. Of those, 112 – or 19.4 per cent – were found to have developed the problem by the end of the eight months.
