A 10-year-old girl from Virginia died of the coronavirus after taking on the role of ‘class nurse’ while in school, her parents claim.
Theresa Sperry’s fifth grade teacher gave her the assignment of escorting her sick classmates to the school nurse – then she became sick with a headache, fever and relentless cough, CNN reported.
‘One of the things she told us before she got sick, was that her job was to be the “class nurse” to take the sick kids from the class to the nurse’s office,’ her father Jeff Sperry said.
‘And you have to understand my daughter, this is who she is, helping people is my daughter, it’s not something that she wouldn’t have wanted to do.’
The Hillpoint Elementary School student’s first symptoms were a headache on September 22, with a fever the following day. Her pediatrician had set up a Covid-19 test appointment for her the following Monday.
But by Sunday evening, Teresa had developed a nagging cough, which was bad enough to cause her to throw up. Her mother Nicole took her to a local emergency room where she was tested for strep throat, which came back negative, as well as Covid-19, but those results were pending.
‘They did her chest X-ray and when they came back, they said that there was no signs of Covid pneumonia, her lungs were perfect, beautiful,’ Nicole said, adding that the doctors ‘didn’t seem concerned’ so she took Teresa home.
Within 24 hours, Teresa stopped breathing and was rushed to a local hospital, then transferred to Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters (CHKD) Norfolk, where she died.
Teresa’s parents said they feel they will have done right by their daughter by continuing to share her story, with the hopes that it will change the minds of coronavirus non-believers.
On Monday, as Nicole sat in the hospital trying to make sense of the tragedy, a school board meeting for the district where she teaches took place less than 10 miles down the road. To her astonishment, parents at that meeting advocated for the district to drop its mandatory mask mandate.
‘At the same time that I was at my daughter’s bedside, Chesapeake Public Schools was having a school board meeting and I had friends come back and tell me later, that while I was sitting next to my daughter, who was no longer with us, there were adult parents there basically saying Covid is over and healthy people don’t die, especially kids,’ Nicole told CNN.
‘And I’m sitting there next to my dead daughter who was perfectly healthy, who’s a child who did everything she was supposed to do.’
After Teresa’s death, her family was notified she had tested positive for Covid-19.
Teresa’s father Jeff described his daughter as an avid reader, smart, beautiful, loving and always open to helping and taking care of others.
It was her caring nature that contributed to her death, her parents believe. But it was also the fact that parents were sending their sick children to school.
‘Our daughter was perfectly healthy,’ Nicole wrote on Facebook. ‘And would have continued to be here if people would have stopped sending their sick kids to school.’
Teresa’s parents are vaccinated, as are their two older sons. Teresa and their youngest 9-year-old son were not yet vaccinated but were hoping to soon become eligible.
At Hillpoint Elementary School, the protocol is for the classroom teacher or an adult to contact the main office with a ‘Code C’ if a child is feeling ill and one of the administrators or a school nurse comes to the classroom to pick up the student, Suffolk Public Schools Division Superintendent John Gordon III told CNN.
The school is still investigating to see whether this process was followed, he said.
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