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A two-month-old baby in Gilbert, Arizona, has tested positive for coronavirus. Her mother, Angelica Wendell, now wants to warn others that young children, indeed, can get the virus.
A mother in Gilbert is warning others to take the virus seriously after her two-month-old daughter tested positive for COVID-19. Wendell believes that her baby caught the virus from her sister, who visited recently and later developed symptoms.
Wendell was shocked when she found out her baby also had the virus.
“Everyone’s like kids don’t get it, so it’s not a big deal, it’s just old and sick people. So when you find out your newborn has it, she’s my first kid, so I’ve never had another baby to experience any other illness with, so when you find out it’s COVID, it’s just heartbreaking. I started panicking because I didn’t know what was going to happen,” said Wendell.
The first sign of her daughter being sick was when she stopped acting like her happy self and developed a fever.
“I had a bad feeling about it so I took her to the emergency room. The next day she started getting bad congestion and she started getting a viral rash.”
Thankfully, the baby is now fever-free and is doing a lot better. However, that sadly isn’t the case for every child infected.
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Dr. Eunice Yoon works as a critical care pediatrician at Banner’s Cardon Children’s Medical Center. She says it is hard to know for sure if the virus is common in infants.
“We know that kids overall are maybe 5-10 percent of all the positive tests that we have. But we’re also not testing everyone, so it’s hard for us to know. We also know that babies primarily are getting their infections from adults. They’re not getting them from other kids.”
Yoon said that children who get the virus, especially babies, usually have mild symptoms. Up to 50 percent of children won’t show symptoms at all.
“We’re always worried about those newborn babies when they’re less than a month; their immune systems are not fully developed. We don’t know whether this viral illness could predispose them to other illnesses, and we don’t know if there’s going to be any effects down the road for these kids,” said Yoon.
As for the baby’s mother, she is hopeful that others will take precautions after hearing about her daughter’s story.
“Just be careful, even if you don’t let your baby outside be careful who you let around them because you think even your family is fine, but you may not know exactly what they’re doing. It’s very sad to watch your child, especially with this disease that no one really knows a whole lot about,” said Wendell.
If any parent wants to learn how to reduce wrinkles, this isn’t the way to go about it.
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