Covid-19: Mum’s fears washed aside as kids left in safe hands

When Rana Khalil woke in the middle of the night with a thumping headache and soaring temperature, she was terrified.

Rana Khalil with her children Zara 11, Maryam 5 and Amara 11, near their western Sydney home. Picture: John Feder

When Rana Khalil woke in the middle of the night three weeks ago with a thumping headache and soaring temperature, she was terrified.

The sickness was like nothing she had experienced before, and she immediately called an ambulance.

The 35-year-old had tested positive for Covid-19 the previous day, after taking two of her five children who had complained of mild headaches to get tested.

With her husband out of town for work, Ms Khalil called her sister-in-law to come over and look after the kids, but quickly realised the high likelihood her children had also contracted Covid.

She was overwhelmed with emotion, aghast at the thought of leaving her kids at home alone or forcing other family members to risk contracting the disease.

NSW Health advised her the best option was to take her children into its “Home in Hospital” program, an initiative by the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network set up for children whose Covid- positive parents are too ill to care for them. The service, run across the Children’s Hospital at Westmead and Sydney Children’s Hospital in Randwick, has treated dozens of children since the outbreak began.

The children, most of them Covid-positive themselves, are admitted into a specific children’s ward separate from their parents, but siblings are kept together.

“When I first heard they would be taken to hospital too I was devastated,” Ms Khalil said. “As a mother, I couldn’t bear the thought of them being there all alone with no other family around, and I was very emotional at the time.

“Too much had happened too quickly.”

Ms Khalil’s fears quickly subsided when she realised her children were coping with the change.

“The hospital was amazing, they were really well taken care of,” she said. “I was on Facetime with them a lot to check on them, and I was so relieved to see their smiling faces.”

All five children, aged 14, 13, 11 (twins) and five, tested positive for Covid-19, but all experienced mild symptoms.

The network has also been running a 24/7 virtual health service caring for hundreds of other ­infected children, with the vast majority of them coping with the virus at home.

Network director of clinical ­operations Joanne Ging said she ­realised the need for the service in June when cases were rising but vaccination rates were low.

“There were a lot of parents who were quite unwell, but often the extended family and grandparents were not yet vaccinated,” Dr Ging said.

The hospital has set up learning facilities so children can stay up-to-date with school and they have 24-7 access to devices to contact their family if they need.

Dr Ging admited she could not have predicted the need for such a service, and urged everyone to get vaccinated. “The best way to protect and manage risk in children’s lives … is to get vaccinated,” she said.

Ms Khalil and her children have fully recovered, and were ­released from isolation on Wednesday.