Our daughter’s home detention is over - may our joy go viral

We released the prisoner on Saturday. NSW Health sent a text at lunchtime saying our COVID-positive daughter could end her period of isolation as long as she had not had symptoms for the past 72 hours. She had not.

In fact, the worst she suffered during the week of her incarceration was a blocked nose on the first few days of infection, which was picked up with a rapid antigen test on the Friday before Christmas, and confirmed with a PCR result delivered to her phone on the Sunday, Boxing Day.

Hugs at last: Herald opinion editor Julie Lewis with daughter Grace, who was freed from COVID isolation on Saturday.

She had gone willingly into iso – perhaps too willingly. After all, it was an introspective 19-year-old’s dream: she could stay in her room and do nothing but sleep and scroll through social media and stream movies, and no pesky parent could complain about whether there was something more productive she could be doing. Digital overdose on the Health Department’s orders.

But by last Tuesday night she said she was missing hugs. Small things started to upset her and our FaceTime family meal (she in the bedroom, a plate on her knees, we at the kitchen table with the phone propped up on a tissue box) got a bit teary.

She soldiered on. Because we were in the unknown with Omicron, and she didn’t want her parents to catch it. Because this generation of kids really does care.

By Wednesday, the sniffles eased. The weather was better, so she could go into the backyard. And her father and I remained healthy.

Although we have a small home, I realised we were privileged in many ways when it came to fighting COVID. I’d always thought that the builders of our early 20th century house had Sydney’s heat in mind when they designed it with great airflow, but perhaps they were also mindful of infectious disease. I thanked them every time I felt a breeze pushing through our hallway past our bedroom doors. And counted it a blessing that Omicron struck in summer when I could keep front and back doors open.

Our single bathroom also has a ceiling fan and a big window. We have a stupidly expensive hot/cold fan with a high-efficiency filter in our bedroom and we had another delivered for our daughter. She wore an N95 mask whenever she came out of her room.

The hero of this story must surely be vaccination – without it, the ending would be different. But I don’t discount the advantages we had in holding COVID at bay. And not just us. We have many middle-class friends and acquaintances whose young adult children came down with COVID around Christmas and who wondered if they would be next. As yet, none has tested positive.

The queue outside the Central Station COVID-19 testing clinic. Credit: Rhett Wyman

No doubt Omicron will be hunting for those with less well-ventilated housing, smaller incomes and closer living arrangements. For them, vaccination truly will be everything.

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