An eight-month-old baby has died due to the COVID-19 within hours of being admitted at a hospital in the Philippines.
As soon as Dr. Cherie Tecson-delos Santos, a pediatric neurologist at a hospital in the National Capital Region was called in on August 9 at around 1:27 a.m. the baby was put on cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and within hours by around 10:48 a.m it passed away. The baby was admitted after experiencing seizures.
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The cause of death is believed to be hypoxia which deprives the brain of oxygen for a significant amount of time. The baby’s pneumonia was found to be very severe and incubation had started after a few minutes in the emergency room.
Dr. delos Santos later posted on her Facebook account the incident to remind public that COVID-19 was not over yet. “This morning, I lost an 8-month-old baby to COVID-19. He was a previously well infant who presented with six days of cough and fever before coming to the emergency room with recurrent seizures. He went into cardiac arrest six hours after the referral and died shortly thereafter,” she posted.
“The father is a transport service driver who staunchly believed that COVID-19 wasn’t real. He refused vaccination and accused the emergency room doctors of fabricating the COVID-19 test result, just so the hospital would have an ‘excuse’ for his son’s death,” she added.
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“The father denied having symptoms, all while struggling to contain his cough. His wife was likewise positive. While it is a tragedy to lose such a young life to a disease that is now mostly preventable, the equally devastating aspect of this tale is that they have two more kids at home, both unwilling victims of their parents’ decisions, both unable to make choices to protect their own lives.”
“It is a joint responsibility of the family and the community—not one of them will be safe if not all of us will be protected. So, please, if you don’t want to do it for yourself, get vaccinated: for the children who are counting on us to keep them alive until this pandemic is over,” she added. (AW)
