ORLANDO, Fla. – Orlando Pride soccer player and Olympic Gold Medalist Sydney Leroux took to social media Tuesday to share her personal experience with COVID-19.
In a Facebook post, Leroux said her children tested positive for COVID-19 a few weeks ago.
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“For the longest time, we’ve heard that children aren’t badly affected by COVID and, maybe, for the most part, that is the case. For us - it wasn’t. A few weeks ago I woke up to my son screaming in the middle of the night. When I felt his body it was like Cassius was burning from the inside out,” Leroux wrote in a post.
She said her 4-year-old son, Cassius tested positive for COVID-19. Days later, she said her 1-year-old daughter Roux contracted the virus. In the post, she writes her daughter’s symptoms included “a fever, vomiting, exhaustion and an awful cough.”
“This virus affects every age population. No one is immune to it,” Emergency Medicine Physician Dr. Rejiv Bahl said.
Bahls said while most children with COVID have mild symptoms, some may experience severe symptoms like Leroux’s children.
“Sometimes it’s that cough, fever, congestion. These symptoms are the same for an upper respiratory infection. If you are concerned about COVID-19, it’s important to get your child tested, as it could be a point-of-contact that could spread to other families as well,” Bahl said.
The latest numbers from the Florida Department of Health show more than 172,000 cases of the virus in children 14 and under, with more than 1,000 hospitalizations and six deaths.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 250 kids under the age of 18 have died as a result of the virus in the U.S.
Leroux said her children are back in good health and she managed to stay healthy.
“It has been an extremely hard couple of weeks, but thankfully things are much better now. I wanted to share this story to urge everyone to continue taking this virus seriously when it comes to both you AND your children. I am extremely grateful that both my kids are back to good health and lucky that, somehow, I managed to stay healthy throughout. So please keep wearing your mask, stay socially distanced and get a vaccine if/when you can so we can beat this virus together,” Leroux wrote in a post.
“This pandemic isn’t over, and we need to keep practicing these measures of social distancing, handwashing and wearing a mask to really get this pandemic in our rearview mirror,” Bahl said.
Bahl said getting teens and kids vaccinated will have a huge impact on herd immunity and encourages parents to get their children vaccinated when it becomes available for their age group.