When a local business owner’s daughter contracted COVID last week, his major fear was that the infectious disease would carry over to her unvaccinated, two-year-old sister, and his family’s experience has motivated him to make a generous offer to local primary schools and playgroups.
COVID has well and truly landed in WA, and for the first time, many of us have a colleague, a friend of a friend or a child’s schoolmate who has suffered from an infection.
For Sandeep Salwan this day came last Sunday, when his six-year-old daughter Anaya fell ill.
“She was not feeling well, she had a fever and was very low,” Sandeep said.
“Normally she doesn’t act like that, so we thought we would check on it. When we tested her it came back positive,” he said.
Sandeep and his wife, a doctor of Ayurvedic medicine, were devastated at the result.
“We were in shock. We know that it is going on all over the world but when it happens to your own kid it’s a very different story,” he said.
“Anaya had already had her vaccine, but we were concerned about our two-year-old, Aavya,” Sandeep said.
Both husband and wife arranged time off work to care for their sick daughter, whose usual, playful energy was dampened by her illness.
“We had a terrible week, it was devastating, we have had a lot of sleepless nights,” Sandeep said.
“The main challenge we had was to separate the kids from each other, move them into different rooms. That was a challenge – they are sisters, so they want to be together.
“We needed to observe them 24 hours, we were engaged 24 hours with the kids.
“Her body was fighting the virus. She would have dinner and be fine, then she would go to bed and vomit, her temperature would go up and she would vomit again. That made us really worried,” he said.
While supporting young Anaya with parental love and care as she struggled through fever and fatigue, Sandeep and his wife did everything they could to ensure the virus did not pass to their youngest daughter.
“We focused on sanitisation, so we changed her bed sheets twice a day, her pillow covers, her quilt, every day we would wash and sanitise her room,” Sandeep said.
“Because of that, the virus didn’t pass to the rest of the family.”
Thankfully, relief came last Friday when, after five nights of vigilant care, Anaya gave a negative result and was cleared of COVID.
“A lot of people are going through the same stress. Luckily, we could manage it, but many people can’t do that,” said Sandeep, who operates a sanitisation business in Armadale, Indoor Infection Control.
“They might have two jobs, they might not be able to have time off to look after their kids.
“When I had this realisation, I thought let’s do something to help the community,” he said.
Sandeep is offering his business services, which provides sanitisation services to medical centres, hospitals and schools, to pre-primary carers and primary schools, for free.
“I want to give something to society, so this offer is for a first free service to places where kids are too young to be vaccinated,” Sandeep said.
For organisations who wish to take Sandeep up on his offer, they can contact Indoor Infection Control at indoorinfectioncontrol.com, or call 1300241679.
“Hygiene is very important, and we don’t want anyone else to suffer.”
