The funeral has taken place of a 13-year-old boy believed to be the first child in the UK to die after testing positive for the coronavirus.
His immediate family, including his six siblings, were unable to attend after his younger brother and older sister began displaying symptoms of the virus.
The coffin carrying the body of Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab was lowered into the ground by four people wearing protective clothing and masks at a ceremony at the Eternal Gardens dedicated Muslim burial ground in Kemnal Park, Chislehurst.
Mourners all stood apart from each other as they observed social distancing guidelines.
The teenager from Brixton, south London, died in hospital in the early hours of Monday. He had tested positive for Covid-19 last Friday, a day after he was admitted to King’s College hospital. He is not believed to have had any known pre-existing health conditions.
A friend of the family, Mark Stephenson, said two of Ismail’s siblings had now also developed mild symptoms including a temperature and loss of taste, and were self-isolating.
The diverging approaches to school closures may stem from the considerable uncertainty around the extent to which children are playing a role in spreading Covid-19.
Children make up a tiny minority of confirmed cases – fewer than 1% of positive tests in China were children under nine. It is probable that a bigger pool are getting infected but only experiencing mild or no symptoms. Among those who have tested positive, nearly 6% developed very serious illness, according to an assessment of 2,000 patients aged under 18 in Wuhan, with under-fives and babies being most at risk.
A significant unknown is how infectious children are, assuming large numbers are getting infected. Early evidence suggests that around 50% of transmission in the pandemic at large has involved asymptomatic people and children could be among this group.
“It seems most plausible to me that they are being infected but are at low risk of developing disease,” said Prof Peter Smith, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “We know that for flu, children are important transmitters of infection, which is the basis for the flu vaccination programme directed at children, but we do not know yet how important they are as transmitters of coronavirus. So closing schools would be based on the assumption that they do make an important contribution to transmission.”
Rates of various illnesses are seen to rise and fall at the start and end of school terms. School holidays were thought to have led to a plateau in the 2009 swine flu pandemic. Also advised hygiene and social distancing measures, such as hand washing and reduced physical contact, just aren’t very effective in a primary school playground setting. So there is the potential for schools to act as a local fountain of infection for the surrounding area.
“Every mother and father knows that when kids go back to school they’re going to get hammered by colds and flus and sore throats,” said Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia.
This uncertain science has to be carefully weighed against the certain disruption and cost of school closures, including taking large numbers of doctors and nurses out of the workplace, and unintended consequences such as grandparents, who are among the most vulnerable, taking on childcare and facing greater exposure.
Stephenson, the director of Madinah College who set up a GoFundMe appeal for the family to raise funds, said before the funeral: “Shaykh Sharif Zain will be leading the funeral and I will be delivering a short speech for the Abdulwahab family and a few close family and friends. We hope that we can send a live stream of the funeral to his mother and siblings so they can be there remotely, but they are obviously devastated that they can’t be there in person again.
“It’s extremely upsetting for everyone involved, but they have been very moved by the warmth and very positive messages of support from people following their appeal.”
Ismail’s Covid-19 symptoms started on Monday 23 March. An ambulance took him to King’s College hospital on 26 March and he was put on a ventilator. He tested positive for Covid-19 the following day and was put into an induced coma. He died on Monday 30 March at 3am after his lungs failed and he had a cardiac arrest.
The hospital confirmed a 13-year-old boy had tested positive for Covid-19 and died. It said there would be no postmortem.
A spokesman for the trust said: “Sadly, a 13-year-old boy who tested positive for Covid-19 has passed away, and our thoughts and condolences are with the family at this time.
“The death has been referred to the coroner and no further comment will be made.”
The GoFundMe appeal for his family has raised more than £70,000 in three days, with more than 4,000 people donating and many leaving messages of condolence and support.
