I recently asked my husband what we would do if we both got severely ill with coronavirus and couldn’t take care of our toddler. Under any other circumstances requiring backup childcare, the answer would be simple: my dad, my son’s grandfather, who lives ten minutes away. Now, Grandpa is emphatically off-limits as a caregiver due to his elevated risk of complications from covid-19. I tried to shrug off this concern—of both of us, neither at high risk, falling critically ill at the same time—as the far-fetched imagining of my worst-case-scenario-ist mind. Then last week brought news stories that put into headlines this parental nightmare.
I recently asked my husband what we would do if we both got severely ill with coronavirus and couldn’t take care of our toddler. Under any other circumstances requiring backup childcare, the answer would be simple: my dad, my son’s grandfather, who lives ten minutes away. Now, Grandpa is emphatically off-limits as a caregiver due to his elevated risk of complications from covid-19.
Roshni Mathew, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Stanford Children’s Health, notes that even in a two-parent household where both caregivers are sick with covid-19, it might be possible to trade off responsibilities, based on the severity of symptoms.
Given the greater risk that covid-19 infection poses to older adults, Mathew says that “grandparents are not ideal caregivers in this situation.” She adds that “the risk of severe disease is higher in individuals over 60 and most severe in those over 80.” While younger adults have been hospitalized, “the risk is significantly less for otherwise healthy adults under 60.
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