COVID may be messing with your sperm — how it can affect your unborn kids, according to a new study

Your cough and runny nose may have only lasted a few days — but COVID’s hidden effects on your little swimmers may impact your unborn children for years to come.

Research published earlier this year linked COVID-19 infections to poor sperm quality, including lower sperm count, motility and percentage of “grade A sperms.”

But a new study out this month shows that even if you manage to overcome that fertility issue, your coronavirus-tinged genetic material could pass problems onto your offspring.

Researchers in Australia infected mice with the virus that causes COVID and had them reproduce with females — and found that their offspring had higher levels of anxiety.

“We found that the resulting offspring showed more anxious behaviors compared to offspring from uninfected fathers,” said lead study author Elizabeth Kleeman.

Published in Nature Communications, this is the first study to explore the long-term impact of COVID on the health and development of succeeding generations.

Researchers found that the virus altered RNA molecules in sperm, which are “involved in the regulation of genes that are known to be important in brain development.”

All the offspring from COVID-infected fathers exhibited those effects, and females in particular showed “significant changes” in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory, learning and emotional regulation.

The team believes these shifts may, according to co-senior author Carolina Gubert, “contribute to the increased anxiety we observed in offspring, via epigenetic inheritance and altered brain development.”

Their findings suggest the COVID-19 pandemic could have an enduring impact on future generations, according to the team.

However, they called for further research to determine whether people showed the same results.

“If our findings translate to humans, this could impact millions of children worldwide, and their families, with major implications for public health,” lead researcher Anthony Hannan said.

In terms of mental health in the post-COVID world, studies show that approximately 50% of adults aged 18 to 24 suffer from anxiety, characterized by excessive worry, fear and nervousness that interfere with daily life.

While COVID has been hell on our mental health, it has also been particularly detrimental to children’s development.

Since the pandemic, test scores have continued to drop among students who were impacted by lockdown, and disparities between socioeconomic groups continue to grow.

Reading scores dropped from 2022 to 2024, for the worst results since National Assessment of Educational Progress testing began in 1992.

NAEP exams, given to a large sample of fourth- and eighth-grade students across the nation every two years, show that a full third of kids couldn’t show “basic” reading skills expected for their age group.

Only top-performing students seem to be regaining ground lost during COVID lockdowns, and the “achievement gap” with low-performing kids is ever widening.