Kan. Mother grapples with 4-year-old COVID infection ‘punch’

By SHERMAN SMITH
Kansas reflector

TOPEKA – Jenna Sutter Brown’s 4-year-old daughter couldn’t sleep last week.

Hazel had bad congestion, a barking cough, fever, and allergy-like symptoms. Her parents were not yet aware the daughter had COVID-19.

“I try to listen to him and give him the chance to tell me what’s wrong. And so I said, ‘What’s wrong? Does something hurt? And she just looked at me sobbing and said, ‘I don’t know.’ And it never happened, ”said Sutter Brown. “It’s the night before she was diagnosed. It was one of those, ‘Should I call 911? Is she breathing enough? “

Sutter Brown paused at this point as she realized the need to stay calm and avoid disturbing her daughter. The mother said during a press briefing Monday with the University of Kansas Health System that it looked like a movie. She and her husband, who are both fully vaccinated and live in the Kansas City metropolitan area, have gone to great lengths for 18 months to keep their child away from the virus, and federal approval for a pediatric vaccine seems so close.

Hazel’s disease developed after attending an unmasked preschool.

“It was a punch we weren’t really prepared for,” said Sutter Brown.

The girl is feeling better now, but her illness underscores the threat the virus poses to young children.

Angela Myers, director of the infectious diseases division at Children’s Mercy, said the hospital has treated COVID-19 patients of ages ranging from newborns to 18 years old. There are currently 11 children hospitalized with COVID-19 at Children’s Mercy, including three in the intensive care unit.

Many parents assume that if a child is hospitalized, the child must have some sort of pre-existing condition, but this is not the case. Myers also pointed out that asthma and obesity “are quite common these days.”

“We have kids who are admitted to the hospital and have underlying conditions, but also kids who are otherwise healthy without really having huge risk factors,” Myers said.

Already, school districts have had to modify their operations due to widespread back-to-school epidemics. In the Turner School District in Kansas City, Kansas, 23 students and four staff members tested positive in the first week of class. The Wellington School District announced its closure until September 7 on Friday due to three outbreaks that have infected more than 40 students and staff.

Last year, Myers said, there was no doubt that if the kids were in school they were going to wear a mask. Now, she said, people are less careful and the delta strain of COVID-19 is much more contagious than the original virus.

“I hope children are helped to wear their masks appropriately – by teachers, by school staff and administrators, and hopefully by other children,” Myers said. “I hope other kids feel competent enough to say, ‘Hey, you need to put your mask on.’ “

Some state school boards have refused to require face coverings indoors, despite advice from local, state, federal and international medical experts.

Dana Hawkinson, medical director of infection prevention and control at KU Health, said conversations about mitigating the spread of COVID-19 have become a matter of politics and emotions rather than medicine. He said people should ask themselves if schools can continue without a mask.

“Certainly, based on the available consistent, peer-reviewed evidence, that answer would be no. Many of those schools are now closed and quarantined, ”Hawkinson said. “It brings the kids home. It increases the isolation. So I think it’s just a matter of some people really having to see the changes and the results for themselves. Unfortunately, this will lead to an increased spread of the disease among these children, but also in this community. “

Myers said children, like adults, can suffer from long-term health issues after contracting COVID-19. In rare cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome, children show mild symptoms from the initial infection and then end up in the hospital four to six weeks later with cardiac dysfunction. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has recorded 18 of these cases since the start of the pandemic.

Sutter Brown said the decision to wear a mask is “a lesson in authority.”

– This is what you are asked to do, she said. “It’s not blind obedience, but it’s the best for your community. I want to instill this in my daughter.

Parents, Sutter Brown said, should know that their choices affect their neighborhood and beyond.

“It’s really important right now to think critically, to just be empathetic and kind, and to come with people from a place of understanding and wanting to move forward,” Sutter Brown said.

After her daughter fell ill, she engaged a colleague who had refused to be vaccinated in a “nice conversation”. The coworker then went to get one of the free, safe and effective vaccines.

“I consider it a victory,” said Sutter Brown, “and if that was why, then it was worth it.”