According to the statement, the 4-year-old girl died of COVID-19. Officials say that the girl is believed to have contracted from her mother, an anti-vaxxer. The girl died in her sleep, just five hours after she woke in the early hours with the first signs of a fever, the child’s mother told local media. ‘She was perfectly fine, and then she was gone,’ the grieving mother, Karra Harwood, said . ‘It took her so fast.’
Harwood said she had tested positive the previous day, with her and her fiancé, William, already out of work because they were sick and quarantining at home.
‘I tried to stay away from her and didn’t want her and my other kids to get it,’she said of Kali and her brother and 5-month-old sister, both of whom also got infected.
The mother from Texas said that she now regrets opposing COVID-19 vaccines. In Texas, the vaccination rate is just on 49 percent, according to recent official statistics. That number pales in comparison to New York, where total percentage of eligible vaccination rate is 62% and 67% in Massachusetts, 57% in California, with the national average being 54.5%.
‘I was one of the people that was anti, I was against it,’ the mother told of the shots.
‘Now, I wish I never was,’ she admitted.
‘This is a terrible thing, but I think people need to know about it,’ area health official Philip Keiser said.
‘It’s very important, if your kids are sick, not to say, ‘Oh, they’re going to be OK,’’ Keiser said. ‘If your kids are sick, go seek out medical care.’
Kali Cook had just started pre-kindergarten classes, but there is no suggestion she got infected there, officials said. Contact tracing has not shown her being close to anyone who was infected other than her family.
