Effects of COVID-19 confinement on the household routines of children in Portugal

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 disease (COVID-19) was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on 11 March, 2020. Since then, physical distancing measures such as confinement have been adopted by different governments to control human to human transmission. This study aimed to determine how confinement affects children’s routines, more specifically their physical activity (PA) and sedentary time. An online survey was launched to assess how Portuguese children under 13 years of age adjusted their daily routines to confinement. Parents reported the time each child was engaged in different activities throughout the day, which was used to calculate overall sedentary time and overall physical activity time. Based on the data of 2159 children, our study showed that during confinement: (i) there was a decrease in children’s physical activity time and an increase in screen time and family activities; (ii) boys engaged in more playful screen Time than girls (p < 0.05), and girls played more without PA than boys (p < 0.05); (iii) along the age groups, there was a trend for an increase of the overall sedentary time and an associated decrease of the overall physical activity time. In summary, PA of confined children showed low levels and a clear decreasing trend along childhood. Conjoint family and societal strategies to target specific age groups should be organized in the future.