Mum's nursery fears for toddler with Down's Syndrome amid Covid spike

A mother is considering taking her daughter who has Down’s Syndrome out of nursery over fears the two-year-old could contract coronavirus.

Toddler Rosa, from Edinburgh, was recently hospitalised with respiratory viruses and is at higher risk of contracting Covid-19.

Her mother Shelley fears for her daughter’s health amid rising cases of coronavirus in Scotland.

It comes as almost 5000 people who tested positive in the last week have been in a childcare or education setting.

“We’re just out of hospital with her, she was admitted to critical care at the start of last week and was out on Sunday,” Shelley said.

“That was with respiratory viruses and that’s the second time in her life that’s happened.

“We’ve seen how badly respiratory viruses can affect her so naturally when we worry about Covid, those are the kind of things we’re worried about.”

Shelley says that while she understands the risk to young children contracting coronavirus is lower, she doesn’t want to “gamble” with her daughter’s health.

“It is just that unknown, she might be fine, she might be in critical care, we just don’t know.”

Shelley says she would like her daughter to be vaccinated so she is “protected” from coronavirus, but until then she has decided to keep her world small to keep her safe.

“The pandemic’s been more than half her life and in that time we’ve just had to keep her world really quite small and keep her as safe as we possibly can,” she said.

“As the numbers go up so much, it just feels more and more necessary to do that.”