A 10-year-old girl in Virginia died of Covid-19 complications just five days after she started showing symptoms. Her parents believe she may have been exposed to the virus as a result of being classroom “nurse.”
Teresa Sperry, a fifth grade student at Hillpoint Elementary School in Suffolk, Virginia, started feeling ill on September 22. Her symptoms began with a headache and escalated quickly. By the weekend she developed a terrible cough and was taken to the emergency room where she was tested for strep throat and COVID. Just five days after her first symptoms appeared she stopped breathing and couldn’t be revived, her parents Nicole and Jeff Sperry said, according to The Virginian-Pilot.
The strep test came back negative. The health department contacted Teresa’s family two days after her death to inform them that she had tested positive for COVID.
The week before her symptoms appeared, Teresa told her parents that she was responsible for escorting any of her classmates who were not feeling well out of the classroom to the nurse’s office.
“Our daughter was perfectly healthy. And would have continued to be here if people would have stopped sending their sick kids to school,” Nicole Sperry wrote in a Facebook post, according to NBC News . “She was required to walk all sick students in her class to the nurse’s office.”
“That was her classroom job,” her parents told The Virginian-Pilot. “And she said that if the kids were sick and needed to go home, she had to go get their book bag and take it back.”
Suffolk Public Schools authorities are now investigating the parents’ claim. Anthonette Ward, a spokeswoman for the school district, told The Virginian-Pilot that if true, it would be a violation of the school’s policy which stipulates that adults, not children, should accompany kids who are showing possible Covid symptoms.
“The protocol at Hillpoint Elementary School is for the classroom teacher or any adult to contact the main office with a Code ‘C.’ When this occurs, one of the administrators or school nurse will come to the classroom to pick up the student,” she said in an email. “We are still investigating to ensure that this process was followed with fidelity.”
Both parents and their two older children are vaccinated against COVID, the couple told CNN. They planned to get Teresa and her 9-year-old brother vaccinated once the vaccine was approved for use in children under 12-years-old.
Jeff tested positive for a breakthrough COVID infection while planning his daughter’s funeral.
The couple has a message for people doubting the seriousness of the pandemic.
“We did everything we could have done and now we’ve lost a part of our hearts. Covid is real and it doesn’t care who it takes.”
