Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Prevalence of Cardiorespiratory Fitness in Public School Students.

Publication date: Jun 30, 2025

To determine if the COVID-19 pandemic influenced students’ cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), this study examined the prevalence of meeting a health-related standard for CRF in public school students before, during and after the pandemic. A repeated cross-sectional study design was used, and multilevel logistic regression was employed to compare the prevalence of students meeting the CRF standard during the four school years preceding the pandemic (2016-2017 to 2019-2020) with the 2 years during the pandemic (2020-2021 to 2021-2022) and with 2 years after the pandemic (2022-2023 to 2023-2024). Students’ CRF data were provided by 21 school districts that, between 2016-2017 and 2023-2024, consistently participated in a statewide survey of health-related fitness. Before the pandemic 52. 4% of students met the standard for CRF. This prevalence was reduced to 44. 3% during the pandemic (AOR = 0. 69, 95% CI = 0. 67, 0. 70) and remained reduced at 47. 1% after the pandemic (AOR = 0. 77, 95% CI = 0. 76, 0. 79). During periods of societal disruption, such as a pandemic, school personnel should adopt practices aimed at supporting students’ CRF. The COVID-19 pandemic was associated with reduced CRF in public school students, and this trend persisted for at least two school years following the pandemic.

Semantics

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