A 26-year-old care worker has lost her battle with coronavirus today leaving behind her young daughter.
Tributes have poured in for Sonya Kaygan, who was a single mum and described as a ‘caring and kind-hearted soul’.
Sonya worked at the Elizabeth Lodge Care Home in Enfield, Greater London.
Writing on Go Fund Me, relatives wrote: “She gave her life to protecting and caring for the most vulnerable. She was a gentle, caring and kind-hearted soul.”
Sonya - believed to be Turkish-Cypriot - has left behind a three-year-old daughter who is now being looked after by her grandmother Ayse who is “deeply hurting from the loss of her daughter”.
Relatives have launched a fundraising page for contributions towards funeral costs and caring for her young daughter. So far the campaign has raised £1, 020.
“The money raised will go a long way in making life more bearable after experiencing this unexpected tragedy,” they wrote.
The news follows grim statistics on deaths of care home residents with the most recent figures showing 217 lost their lives up until April 3, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Health secretary Matt Hancock said up-to-date figures on coronavirus deaths will be published “very shortly”.
Others have called for data to be published more speedily, such as daily.
Data is delayed because it relies on death certificates which must be registered.
However, experts have pushed for care home fatalities to be included in daily updates on deaths in hospitals, concerned they are falling “under the radar”.
Mr Hancock told the Health and Social Care Committee: "I'm concerned about this as well; I asked CQC to make sure that we record the data in care homes specifically, of those who are residents of care homes, whether they die in hospital or in the care home, and they started collecting that data yesterday and it will be published very shortly.
"So I have introduced a new measure that will directly address this question."
He added that the NHS has been working with ONS to reduce delays, which has so far been shortened to five days.
He added: "Every death in any setting matters and is an important part of our analysis."
In England there are 3,084 care homes that became infected with COVID-19 up to April 15, the Care Quality Commission confirmed.
