Coronavirus: we’re keeping our kids home to protect the elderly’

Medics Hemant Garg and Arwen Boyle are forging on with a new way of living.

Doctors Arwen Boyle and Hemant Garg with their two sons Findlay, 3, and Edryd, 5, in Como, Perth. Picture: Colin Murty

Medics Hemant Garg and Arwen Boyle are forging on with a new way of living. The Perth couple ­decided this week to take their son Edryd, 5, out of preschool and their other boy, Findlay, 3, out of day­care. It is their way of trying to slow the spread of COVID-19.

It means Dr Garg is working part-time as a GP and doing some locum shifts at night, while Dr Boyle, a GP registrar, works days. They use a babysitter for the days when they both go to work. They are judicious about when they take their sons for a walk or a short play in the park. They have done this only twice this week, which is about as infrequently as the boys can tolerate. They want all students whose parents can have them at home to do so.

Dr Garg expressed concern that the federal government is taking a “reactive” approach to social distancing in a letter to Health Minister Greg Hunt on March 13, signed by more than 2500 doctors.

The letter recommends schools close for three to four weeks to “allow a steady declaration of cases of coronavirus to present to hospitals and fever clinics as their symptomatic phase develops”.

Schools in Britain closed on Friday but will continue to look after the children of frontline workers.

However, Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said on Friday the nation’s schools would remain open. “We are looking for a proportionate response which is sustainable through several months,” Dr Kelly said.

“At the moment our circumstances are very different, for ­example, from the UK. They have many more cases of COVID-19 than we do: 2600 at last count and over 71 deaths. They are making decisions on the basis of their own circumstances. But they are still looking to do the same thing as us — to flatten the curve, to save lives through saving beds and taking the pressure off our healthcare system.

“At the moment for us, that is not necessary in relation to schools. We know from where the virus has broken out, very few kids get the illness. They don’t appear to be transmitting between children — in fact, it’s more likely that children will get it from their own parents.”

Dr Boyle said she was concerned that if she or Dr Garg were infected, they could give COVID-19 to their children who would pass it to other children at school. They could, in turn, infect vulnerable people such as grandparents.