“In a way, I know that you’re still here, but I miss you so damn much! I have lost my best friend.”
Those are the words Wes Gibson posted on Facebook about his son Wyatt, a previously-healthy 5-year-old boy who succumbed to the coronavirus Friday.
Wyatt Gibson of Calhoun, Ga., had no underlying medical conditions, and his family thought he was suffering from food poisoning initially, according to a statement released by his grandmother Andrea Mitchell.
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“A day, two. No appetite, a little vomiting, a bit lethargic,” Mitchell wrote. “He’d barely had more than the sniffle or two as prior illnesses go. Then the white tongue. Alarmed, he was hustled off to the local hospital. Then the next day to TC Thompson Children’s Hospital in Chattanooga, TN.”
Mitchell said Wyatt was then diagnosed with strep and staph infections along with COVID-19. He died in the hospital after suffering a stroke. “We’d been so careful this whole time for it to find us now?” Mitchell wrote.
Children under 12 are not allowed to receive the COVID vaccination at this time, but deaths among children so young is rare. The CDC reports that, of the roughly 600,000 people who have died of COVID-19 in the United States, only 335 were children under the age of 18.
A GoFundMe campaign has been established to help the family with medical bills, funeral costs and other needs. As of Wednesday afternoon, it had raised over $32,000 of its stated $50,000 goal.
Wyatt’s godmother, Amanda Summey, said the family is grateful for the generosity. “It just shows you how much empathy people have. You see the good in people,” Summey said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.