Officials now not certain girl died of COVID
The death of a 4-year-old girl in Galveston County made national news last week, but new questions are emerging about the role COVID-19 played in her sudden passing.
Kali Cook, 4, died at home the morning of Sept. 7 after a brief fever, said her mother, Karra Harwood. Two days later, Galveston County health officials released a statement calling it “the county’s first COVID-related death in a child” younger than 10.
But the announcement may have been premature: Medical examiners had not yet performed an autopsy on the preschooler.
While Kali posthumously tested positive for COVID, the official cause of death is pending the results of an autopsy that was performed Sept. 10, said John Florence, chief medical examiner for Galveston County.
Medical examiners performed an X-ray and took tissue samples from Kali’s major organs, Florence said, which may shed light on her swift death. Toxicology results are still pending.
The circumstances of the 4year-old’s death remain unclear,
said Dr. Philip Keiser, the Galveston County Health Authority.
“As we further investigated, we realized we did not have all the information,” Keiser said. “We did the autopsy because a lot of questions needed to be resolved.”
A doctor consulted by the Houston Chronicle said the timeline is unusual for viral infections in children.
The tiny subset of children who die of the virus typically exhibit severe symptoms that require hospitalization, said Dr. Zahra Ghazi-Askar, a pediatrician at Stanford University. In some cases, they may contract a rare complication known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children that causes prolonged fever, dizziness and stomach pain, but they rarely die immediately after contracting the virus, Ghazi-Askar said.
Harwood told the Chronicle that her daughter died in her sleep five hours after developing a fever on Labor Day. The preschooler had been full of energy the evening before and was otherwise healthy, her mother said.
Twenty-seven children under age 10 have died of COVID in Texas since the pandemic began, according to health officials. But that may be an undercount. The state does not update its tallies until after death certificates are filed weeks or months after a death, meaning recent child fatalities such as Kali’s are not captured in current data.
As of Thursday, 263 children with COVID were hospitalized statewide, slightly down from a recent all-time high.
It is unclear where Kali first contracted the virus. The Galveston County health department does not believe she became infected in her prekindergarten classroom at Kenneth E. Little Elementary School in Bacliff.
Harwood and Kali’s two siblings also tested positive for COVID. Harwood told the Galveston County Daily News she wasn’t vaccinated.
About half the population of the Bacliff ZIP code where the family resides is fully vaccinated — slightly lower than the statewide average of 60 percent, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.
Kali last attended school Sept. 1, six days before her death, the Dickinson Independent School District said in a statement.
The school does not have a mask mandate, but “face coverings are strongly recommended,” according to district policy.
“We can’t require them due to Gov. Abbott’s executive order,” said Tammy Dowdy, a spokeswoman for the district.
Some school districts, including Houston’s, have implemented mask mandates in defiance of the governor’s order. Locally, health professionals agree that Houston Independent School District’s mask mandate is responsible for reducing transmission inside Texas’ largest public school system, in stark contrast to other area schools that have reported ballooning case counts.
Dickinson ISD Superintendent Carla Voelkel called Kali’s death “heartbreaking” and said the district had made therapists available to students and staff.