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Family isolating with Covid speaks out
Coping with Covid: a local family’s story
A Hauraki family of four isolating with Covid-19 say they are happy to talk about it to help normalise the experience for the rest of the community – many of whom may well catch the virus as Omicron spreads. Janetta Mackay reports.
Omicron has had a domino effect on the Corbetts, since younger daughter Hannah, aged 17, returned from the Soundsplash music festival unknowingly carrying it. Father, Blair – who collected her and some Takapuna Grammar School friends from the weekend event near Hamilton on 23 January – was next to succumb. Sister Georgia, 21, was next, followed by her mother, Rachel, at the beginning of February.
“It’s good for people to know it can happen to everyone,” says Rachel, a nurse. “And not to be too frightened of it,” adds Blair.
Hannah says that counting herself she knows 15 young festivalgoers who got Omicron. A number passed the virus on, mostly to family. While the initial offcial local case numbers were said to be just a few TGS students, by late last week the vaccinated Corbetts say the wider cluster they know of had grown to more than 30 people from families in the Devonport-Takapuna area.
She hopes to be able to begin Year 13 of school soon, but as of last week she was still feeling the after-effects of the virus she picked up at Soundsplash.
Hannah says she was “super tired” when the festival ended. She put this down to the nights away camping with her school friends. They mixed with a handful of other students from Westlake Girls High School and Rosmini College.
“I had a cough, which I didn’t think anything about,” she says. After all, older sister Georgia had attended three other, smaller festivals over summer and been fne.
Back home on Sunday and after feeling sick and not sleeping well, Hannah took a Covid-19 test on Tuesday. By then some in the camping group had already started testing positive.
While Hannah was stressing for the two days it took to get her result, her father, an IT specialist who was working from home, began to feel unwell. Blair says it was like having a bad cold and a sore throat for a few days – although his wife says it was more like a nasty fu. “They had a couple of days in bed, achy and tired and with high temperatures.”
Rachel was thankful that as she was already isolating at home due to Hannah, she didn’t go into the Takapuna skin clinic where she works. “I could have put everyone there into isolation,” she says. Another relief is her mother and brother have now been cleared, after having to isolate as close contacts.
Both Rachel and Georgia – who is in her fnal year of studying nursing at AUT – have had vaccination boosters. The women think this is why when they too got sick they did not feel as bad as Hannah and Blair, who were double vaxxed.
“We hoped we would get a milder form and get back to real life faster,” says Rachel. “We realised the isolation was going to be 24 days for us if we didn’t get it.” (a sick person needs to isolate for 14 days, with a close contact needing the extra days to show they too are clear).
Although some people say if Omicron is coming let it rip, the Corbetts attempted to stave off its spread in the house, by using separate bathrooms and keeping their distance.
As a nurse, Rachel is wary of risk-taking, being mindful it exposes vulnerable people in the community and can be unpredictable. For her and Georgia, Omicron was like a cold, but Hannah, who had childhood asthma, is still experiencing headaches and joint pains.
“I’ve still got all the symptoms,” she acknowledges, “but it’s a lot more mild than at the start.”
The family is now awaiting what will be a staggered series of permissions from the Ministry of Health to leave isolation. They were provided with pulse oxymeters to monitor themselves. Other than some “really conficting advice” about when isolation periods are counted from – the onset of symptoms or a positive test – they have been happy with health support, including daily phone check-ins. “We’re all starting to feel better, but we’ve still got days at home.” says Rachel. The family has ordered online supermarket deliveries, supplemented by drop-offs to from friends. They are pleased they stocked up on Panadol and Throaties. “And wine,” adds Blair.
When people learn of their situation, most feel sorry for them. But Rachel says frmly: “There’s plenty of people worse off than we are.”
Blair points to colleagues with family in the United Kingdom who are suffering nasty effects from the Delta virus, including lung damage, hearing loss and long Covid. “We almost eradicated Delta,” Rachel notes. Omicron is different. “It should be everywhere soon,” Blair predicts.
Providing her lingering symptoms clear up, Hannah is frst in line to get the all- clear. She is thankful she got sick at the beginning of the school year, rather than later when study and sport may have been interrupted. “But it’s kind of sad that I’m missing out on the frst few weeks of school in my last year,” she says.
Georgia had to miss a friend’s 21st birthday party. Long, hot summer weekends cooped up inside, when the beach is down the road, have been a drag. “Even to just go out for a walk,” Rachel says wistfully.
Hannah says she is not too worried about being singled out as the Omicron kid once back at school, given plenty of other students in her age group will be in the same boat.
Her mother, however, adds with a resigned smile: “We’ve already been called the ‘Covid Corbetts’.”
