Sydney’s mum Ebony Robertson has detailed her struggle four days after her 16-month-old was confirmed to have Covid-19. The distraught mum of a baby boy with Covid-19 has shared how her symptomatic partner waited for several grueling hours in the back of an ambulance waiting to be admitted to the hospital, a worrying sign of the immense strain the virus is putting on the healthcare system.
Ebony Robertson fought back the tears in a TikTok video on Thursday as she detailed that while she and her three kids were “fine”, the problematic situation was beginning to wear her thin. Since Monday, the Sydney mum has been uploading daily videos documenting her family’s symptoms after her 16-month-old son Arthur was confirmed to have the virus.
He was thought to have contracted it from a daycare worker last Wednesday after being infectious for a week. Ms. Robertson said she had been experiencing her symptoms this week, along with her eldest son Lochlan, 15, and her partner Scott Muscat. However, Mr. Muscat’s condition took a turn Wednesday evening, and they called for an ambulance at 10.28 pm.
In a grim sign of the healthcare system barely managing under the weight of the virus, the struggling mum said her partner didn’t get admitted into the emergency department until 3 am. The family’s home is in one of 12 local government areas of concern in western Sydney. The ABC reported that the Blacktown, Westmead, and Nepean hospitals turned away Covid-19 patients arriving by ambulance Wednesday night.
“They were going to take him to Westmead Hospital, but they came back to me and said Westmead is at capacity and took him to Concord Hospital,” Ms. Robertson told ABC News. “And then they sat out the front for one-and-a-half hours.” She recalled Mr. Muscat telling her eight ambulances ahead of him and a makeshift treatment tent set up as “an extra emergency station”.
“The health system is just really struggling,” Ms. Robertson told viewers in her latest TikTok. “I feel really tired, I have really bad headaches, but emotionally I’m just so drained. “I’m trying to hold it together so my kids can remain positive because they’ve no other support at the moment, and we can’t have anyone in the house to help us.
“But for now, our health is intact [and] Scott is doing OK.” In her “day two” video, Ms. Robertson, who has been fully vaccinated, revealed Mr. Muscat and her teenager had developed “full-on” symptoms, including body aches, headaches, and nausea. Meanwhile, her six-year-old boy, Zachary, was “happy as anything,” and Arthur was “excellent”.
Ms. Robertson expressed in her latest video that she wasn’t sharing her situation to attract sympathy; she wanted to urge people to get vaccinated. NSW recorded 1029 new locally acquired Covid cases on Thursday, including 185 linked to a known issue or cluster and 160 household contacts.
A total of 25 were close contacts of previous cases, and the source of infections of the remaining 844 was still under investigation. Three more men were confirmed to have died – one in his 30s, one in his 60s, and one in his 80s. Read related topics: Sydney.
