JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, August 11, 2025

Mom thanks medics as:

2-year-old daughter survives COVID-19

by

Rishard Khan
1524 days ago
20210608
Two-year-old Sherya Gosine rests as she recovers from COVID-19.

Two-year-old Sherya Gosine rests as she recovers from COVID-19.

COURTESY REYA GOSINE

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

One of the lat­est re­cov­er­ing COVID-19 pa­tients in the coun­try is two-and-a-half-year-old Shreya Go­sine. 

She is among sev­er­al chil­dren in­fect­ed lo­cal­ly—ev­i­dence that no one is safe from the virus as warned by health of­fi­cials. 

Her moth­er, Reya Go­sine, 31, be­lieves they were in­fect­ed on May 21 when they vis­it­ed a rel­a­tive to col­lect sup­plies for the tod­dler.

She said the rel­a­tive was not feel­ing well and got wet in the rain the day be­fore.

A few days lat­er, she said the rel­a­tive test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 and had to be hos­pi­talised.

 Around this time, both she and her daugh­ter be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing flu-like symp­toms and on May 28, they pre­sent­ed them­selves for test­ing.

But be­fore they could re­ceive the re­sults, Shreya’s con­di­tion wors­ened. 

“Fri­day June 4, I woke up around 4 am and I re­alised Shreya was roast­ing with a fever. When I checked it, it was 104 de­grees Fahren­heit...I gave her a bath, I gave her some med­ica­tion and what­not,” Go­sine said.

Nor­mal body tem­per­a­ture ranges in chil­dren are be­tween 97.9 and 99 de­grees Fahren­heit (36.6 to 37.2 de­grees Cel­cius). Shreya’s fever was equiv­a­lent to 40 de­grees Cel­cius.

Go­sine said her daugh­ter al­so had a blood oxy­gen lev­el of 89 per cent ac­cord­ing to a pulse oxime­ter. Nor­mal ranges are be­tween 95 and 100 per cent. 

Af­ter sev­er­al calls to the hos­pi­tal went unan­swered, she broke their quar­an­tine to go to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

It is per­mis­si­ble to break quar­an­tine to seek ur­gent med­ical at­ten­tion, health of­fi­cials have pre­vi­ous­ly said.

It’s on­ly while there, they con­firmed the pos­i­tive re­sults which is why the de­ci­sion was made to ad­mit Shreya to the hos­pi­tal. 

They were both trans­ferred to the new­ly built Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal which was con­vert­ed to a COVID-19 treat­ment fa­cil­i­ty, co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, on the day she be­lieves she was in­fect­ed. 

The news of be­ing pos­i­tive ter­ri­fied Go­sine de­spite prepar­ing men­tal­ly for it fol­low­ing the news of the rel­a­tive’s con­di­tion. 

“Get­ting the ac­tu­al re­sult and it be­com­ing a re­al­i­ty—it was re­al­ly heart­break­ing. I just sat there by the doc­tor and I just cried. I couldn’t do any­thing. I was just scared and then see­ing her in front of me sick, re­gard­less of what the rea­son was it was re­al­ly scary and heart­break­ing,” she said. 

This was com­pound­ed with fears for her own well­be­ing as an asth­mat­ic. 

“It had re­al­ly bad mo­ments. I felt help­less. Some peo­ple would say this is my fault and I’m such a bad moth­er—what­ev­er it may be. I had those mo­ments, those feel­ings even though it could have hap­pened to any­body,” Go­sine said.

Dur­ing Shreya’s four-day stay at the fa­cil­i­ty, Go­sine said they were treat­ed ex­cep­tion­al­ly by the staff who were vis­i­bly over­whelmed and ex­haust­ed.

“The treat­ment was on point. I can’t even ex­press that enough. The nurs­es were re­al­ly amaz­ing with us, the doc­tors as well. They were just on point. 110 per cent,” she said. 

She was so sat­is­fied with the treat­ment that she want­ed to pub­licly thank the pae­di­a­tri­cians who saw Shreya—Dr Sookhai, Dr Har­riper­sad, Dr Mo­hammed, Dr Rock and Dr Abeo. 

On Mon­day, they were sent home to com­plete sev­en days of home self-iso­la­tion be­fore be­ing re­leased from the Min­istry of Health’s care.

She said Shreya is now back to her old self and is re­cov­er­ing well. 
Hav­ing had their brush with COVID-19, she gives this ad­vice to the pub­lic: “If you re­al­ly don’t need to leave your home, don’t leave. Look what hap­pened, some­thing so sim­ple and this per­son didn’t have any symp­toms. They just said they got wet in the rain.”

Shreya is not the first child to be in­fect­ed with COVID-19 in the coun­try. The ex­act fig­ure of chil­dren to be in­fect­ed to date has not been re­leased by the Min­istry of Health which al­so did not re­spond to queries by Guardian Me­dia.

How­ev­er, based on fig­ures giv­en by Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh in March, there were 21 con­firmed cas­es of Mul­ti-sys­tem In­flam­ma­to­ry Syn­drome (Mis-C) among in­fants in Trinidad–a re­sult of COVID-19.

Last year, re­ports al­so sur­faced of a ba­by be­ing hos­pi­talised af­ter test­ing pos­i­tive for the dis­ease.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored