A Texas 4-year-old girl died from COVID-19 just hours after first showing symptoms, and now his mother says she regrets being “anti-vaxx,” The (Galveston County) Daily News reported Friday.
According to the report, the girl’s mother, Karra Harwood, was diagnosed Monday with the coronavirus and isolated from her children, including 4-year-old daughter Kali Cook, but the girl developed a fever around 2 a.m. Tuesday, which her family gave her medicine to relieve, and she died in her sleep before 7 a.m.
“She was so funny and sassy,” Harwood said. “She wasn’t your average little girl. She’d rather play with worms and frogs than wear bows. She was just so pretty and full of life.”
“I would rather her be a name than just a little girl,” she added, sobbing. “She was beautiful.”
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Kali’s mother said she’d never been diagnosed with an immune disorder or other health conditions, although she tended to get sicker than her siblings.
“We are all so broken and lost and just trying to figure out how we are gonna get threw this life without her light. Our family has covid and is out of work due to it , so we are overly stressed and hurting. Anything will help and kali would be so thankful to rest in comfort and wait to see us all again,” the family wrote in a GoFundMe campaign.
“This is a terrible thing, but I think people need to know about it,” said the county’s local health authority, Philip Keiser.
Children don’t usually experience serious symptoms, but Keiser said those who show any symptoms should receive medical care as soon as possible.
“It’s very important, if your kids are sick, not to say, ‘Oh, they’re going to be okay,'” Keiser said. “If your kids are sick, go seek out medical care.”
Kali was last at her preschool on Sept. 1, nearly a week before she died, and contact tracing showed no children or adults who had come into close contact with her has tested positive for the virus.
The girl was too young to be eligible for vaccines, and Kali’s mother said she regrets not being among the 60 percent of the county’s eligible residents to get vaccinated.
“I was one of the people that was anti, I was against it,” Harwood said. “Now, I wish I never was.
