The mother of a three-year-old rushed to hospital a week after contracting Covid on four separate occasions has said she fears a winter spike in cases of the “frightening” virus, which also left him with asthma and a rare skin condition. Kerry Degg, 45, said she dreads a spike of coronavirus cases this winter as the last four times her son Elliott returned a positive test, he was admitted to University Hospital of North Staffs, Staffordshire, a week later.
After his first diagnosis in October 2020, medics had to resuscitate Elliott at the top of the stairs in their family home in Newcastle-under-Lyme after he turned blue and experienced convulsions, “ridiculous” temperature spikes and foaming at the mouth. Kerry said paramedics arrived at her home in protective suits “looking like horror film characters” but one of them “ripped his suit off” so he could get up the stairs to save her son.
“I shouted at him that I think we’ve got Covid but he said he didn’t care – it was all very dramatic at the time, them trying to help Elliott,” she said. Elliott is now asthmatic post-Covid and during his third hospital admission he started to show signs of dermographism, a condition also known as skin writing, where uncomfortable red rashes appear on the skin when a patient is touched.
