Covid NSW: How virus hit one family with different levels of symptoms

It’s a story currently playing out in families across the nation — all Covid-positive but some have symptoms and others none, as the virus unpredictably impacts differently.

When Rachel Noy’s father tested positive for Covid late last year, her whole family was exposed — but the virus affected them all differently.

Her double-vaccinated father had no symptoms and it was her six-month-old baby Kane who first showed signs something was wrong.

“My little one progressively got worse … he wouldn’t eat or drink, we struggled to get him to have anything and he got worse and worse and went downhill real quick,” the 42-year-old Newcastle mum said.

As a nurse, she knew she had to act.

“I had a gut feeling to take him to hospital … he wasn’t eating, was very dehydrated, he tested positive and they admitted him,” she said.

“While I was in there I went downhill in a matter of two hours. I started to crash so we both go admitted.”

Kane Hookham was six months old when he contracted Covid and “went downhill fast”.

Ms Noy was double vaccinated although Kane was obviously too young to be vaccinated.

While they spent four days in hospital, her partner Joshua Hookham and two-year-old son Kyle, who also tested positive, had no symptoms.

“We crashed, they didn’t. My partner works where he is out with the public every day, he could have spread it a lot worse if he kept working,” she said.

“I got every symptom you could get, the diarrhoea, loss of smell and taste, bad headaches, aches, nausea, everything. The headaches I could not have controlled, they were that bad they were giving me (oxycodone painkiller) Endone and they lasted up to eight weeks.

“I’ve had migraines but these headaches topped it, they were the worst ever.”

Kane Hookham was taken to hospital in an ambulance aged six months.

From June to December 25, during the Delta wave, 359 children were admitted to hospital with Covid and 13 have been admitted to intensive care.

“It is weird how we got hit so hard and my partner got nothing — no symptoms, nothing — and my parents, neither had symptoms and we are all double vaccinated,” she said.

“It is hit or miss and people say: ‘Well, maybe you are not as healthy as your partner’ but what is the excuse for the baby?”

Rachel Noy, her partner Joshua Hookham and their two children Kyle and Kane all caught Covid.

As parents started to vaccinate their children aged five to 11 this week, paediatrician and Sydney University vaccine expert Prof Robert Booy said the virus is mostly mild in children.

“The majority get it really quite mildly and without symptoms at all sometimes but a minority get it more severely,” Prof Booy said.

“We all have slightly different genetics and child has half from each parent and that can make a difference. The exposure infecting dose might be different … if you have a heavy exposure in a household you sometimes get it more severely.

“A quarter of babies and children with Covid have no symptoms, half have a cold — mild symptoms — but 1 per cent need to be hospitalised and one in 1000 go to intensive care.”

In NSW, one child, Sebastian Moroney, died last week aged three. The Campbelltown boy had a rare condition that left him vulnerable.

“In the USA there have been over 800 deaths (in children aged up to 18), so for every thousand adults that have died, one child has died in that country,” Prof Booy said.

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