5-Year-Old Girl With Disability Dies From COVID-19 Before Getting Chance To Be Vaccinated

A 5-year-old girl in Australia tragically died after battling COVID-19 for two weeks. The heartbroken family of the child blamed the government for her untimely death and criticized them for opening the boundaries before the young and vulnerable got a chance to be vaccinated.

Ruby Boston, from Queensland, the northeastern state of Australia, died Tuesday, just two weeks after she tested positive for the virus. At the age of two, Boston was diagnosed with Cockayne Syndrome Type 2, a rare, incurable genetic condition that left her unable to walk or talk, 7 News reported.

After contracting the virus, Boston's preexisting medical condition soon escalated her illness putting her on a ventilator days before her death.

"She caught the virus before I could get her that little bit more immunity," Boston's grieving mother said. The earliest possible appointment for Boston to get jabbed was last Friday but by then, she was already diagnosed with Covid-19.

Queensland opened its interstate border on Dec. 17, almost a month before the vaccines were made available for young children on Jan. 10.

The family wants their young girl to be remembered as a "beautiful and sweet girl, not a statistic." Although the family acknowledges the fact that the sufferers of the particular genetic condition have a life expectancy of 5-7 years, they believe that the opening of Queensland borders before the vaccine was made available for children has contributed to their child's death.

"Perhaps more support and forethought should have been given to the families of the young and vulnerable," Lucinda Jeffery, the young girl's aunt, said, News.com.au reported.

"We really just wanted the world to know, she wasn’t just a child who died with Covid, she was someone’s child, she was my sister Ashleigh’s beloved daughter and her name was Ruby," the family wrote on a Go Fund Me page set up to support the grieving parents.

Ever since Queensland opened its borders, the state has been recording thousands of cases daily. It has reported 234 COVID-19 deaths to date. Australia has so far reported 2,257,745 confirmed cases of coronavirus and a total of 3904 deaths.