5-year-old boy in Georgia dies of Covid as cases rise across country

Wyatt Gibson loved superheroes so much that he always wore a cape. Wyatt, 5, loved horses, dogs, trees, flowers and, really, anything that kept him outside. He liked to play with Legos or blocks, things that allowed him to build. For Wyatt, everything was fun, even the trips to the grocery store.

In one video, Wyatt strums a toy guitar and wears cowboy boots, spinning in the grass and singing, “I love you trees and birds and I love donkeys and I love dogs.”

Wyatt has been a life cut short by Covid-19 as the number of cases increases across the country, mainly due to the spread of the highly contagious delta variant.

Today, a family in Northwest Georgia mourns the loss of the boy who “brought joy to everything,” his godmother said.

“He loved everyone. I mean, he never met a stranger,” Wyatt’s godmother Amanda Summey said in tears. “It was all fun. No matter what it was. He was my little boy’s best friend.

“He was perfect. He was absolutely perfect,” she said, her voice broken.

Wyatt died in his mother’s arms at a children’s hospital on Friday after falling ill with coronavirus and having a stroke, according to Summey and a statement from Andrea Mitchell, Wyatt’s maternal grandmother.

“We had been so careful all this time that he found us now? He was fighting for his life,” Mitchell wrote. “His mother, standing for 4 days, never went between cuddling him to keep moving and fighting and begging him to stay. His father, the backbone of the family, coughing from Covid, now stood by him. – even next door in silent worry, beyond believing what he was seeing. “

Mitchell said Wyatt had “a lifetime to live” to become who he wanted to be.

“Anything he could have brought to this world now, gone,” she said.

The delta variant now accounts for more than 83% of Covid-19 cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday, and medical experts warn that unvaccinated populations, including young children, are among the most vulnerable.

Covid-19 vaccines have only been authorized on an emergency basis for people aged 12 and over in the United States. As of Thursday, more than 4 million children had been diagnosed with Covid-19, about 14.2% of all cases, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Nearly 340 children aged 17 and under have died from Covid-19, according to the latest CDC data, although serious complications in children remain very rare.

Mitchell and Summey described Wyatt as being in good health before falling ill with the coronavirus.

“He was so healthy and happy,” Summey said. “I mean, he got sniffles here and there, but nothing ever. It just grabbed him, and it just took him. It’s crazy.”

Summey said the family was heartbroken.

“I keep saying that they are just shells of what used to be human beings. It’s like their souls are gone,” she said.

Mitchell said in his statement that “all we know is a bright light is gone” and Wyatt “left rainbows all over the place for us to see”.

“There was so much life in this 5 year old boy. So much joy. So maybe it is not the quantity of life that we will miss. But the quality of life. It was pure happiness,” she declared.