Emily Viegas, 13, is one of the youngest Canadians to die from COVID-19

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This article was published 25/04/2021 (1298 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Emily Victoria Viegas, 13, told her worried father she just needed to rest, maybe she had the flu, a family friend says.

A short time later, after suffering symptoms associated with COVID-19, the Brampton girl was found unconscious in her bed by her 11-year-old brother Nikolas last Thursday — and then became one of the youngest Canadians to die from the virus.

News of her death at home has triggered a shock wave of sympathy for the family and fears about the surging virus variants ravaging Brampton and beyond.

Victor Pinto, a longtime friend, said he spoke several times with Emily’s grief-stricken father, Carlos Viegas, a warehouse worker and avid ball hockey referee and player in his late 50s.

People need to learn from their plight and ongoing struggle with the virus, he said, adding Emily’s mother Maria was in hospital with COVID-19, where she was intubated, when her daughter died.

Maria recovered enough to return home Monday, Pinto said.

“COVID is very serious,” he told the Star. “People not wearing masks — I respect their opinion but I don’t understand it … The only way we’re going to control this pandemic is people wearing masks, social distancing, especially in hot zones.”

Emily “was the one who said, ‘Dad, I think I’m fine. It’s just the flu. Let me rest for half an hour. If I don’t feel well in half an hour, take me to the hospital,’ ” Pinto said. “And that’s when she passed — that’s when Nikolas found her.

“It’s terrible what happened, the circumstances,” but the family is doing OK considering the crushing loss of their sweet girl, he added.

“They’re holding up as well as possible, pretty good considering what happened,” Pinto said. “Carlos is going to be better now that his wife is home. Carlos and Maria and Nikolas are all home together, they can comfort each other.”

Another family friend, Adrian Goddard, created a GoFundMe page for the family that had amassed more than $100,000 in donations by Monday night.

Neither Carlos Viegas nor Goddard responded to requests for interviews on Monday.

Dr. Andrew Healey, corporate chief of emergency medicine at William Osler Health System, told a news conference that a patient arrived at the emergency unit at Osler’s Brampton Civic Hospital on Thursday and died the same day.

Asked about reports that the girl was also suffering from pneumonia, Healey would only say that not having underlying health conditions won’t protect people from the virus.

“I can tell you that in the last 24 hours, I have admitted five people to the intensive care unit, three of whom had no past medical history whatsoever,” he said.

Brampton continues to be the epicentre of Ontario’s fight against COVID-19, with area hospitals detecting record-high positivity rates in patients and one in five people who show up at assessment centres testing positive for the virus.

Brampton surpassed the positivity rate of 22.4 per cent on Sunday and Peel Region reached an all-time high number, reporting COVID-19 400 cases a week per 100,000.

Experts cite the large number of front-line and essential workers in Peel Region, many of them living in homes with multiple residents. Peel and Toronto have started closing workplaces with outbreaks of five or more infections in a bid to break the chain of infection between work and family members at home.

A 13-year-old girl dying at home in her bed was a tragedy that struck Ontarians in a pandemic filled with tragedies, including almost 8,000 deaths.

“While we certainly stand with all the families in our region that have suffered such loss during the pandemic, we acknowledge it is uniquely tragic to lose someone at such a young age,” Peel Public Health said in a statement.

“We also recognize that grief is personal and private, and families need to go through that in private. We will not comment on individual situations.”

A moment of silence was held at Queen’s Park in honour of Emily on Monday.

On Sunday evening, Mayor Patrick Brown tweeted his condolences to the Viegas family.

“This is beyond heart wrenching. As a parent, I am lost for words. Horrifying,” Brown said.

“We can never underestimate the seriousness of COVID-19 and the variants.”

Pinto said Emily’s death brought home to him the need for people, many of whom are chafing under lockdown, to never take for granted what they have.

“Here’s an otherwise healthy 13-year-old girl that (quickly became) ill and then she passed,” Pinto said.

“I’m guilty of it, too. We’re always thinking about what we don’t have and don’t appreciate the things we do have.”

With files from Ben Cohen, Irelyne Lavery and Rhythm Sachdeva

David Rider is the Star’s City Hall bureau chief and a reporter covering city hall and municipal politics. Follow him on Twitter: @dmrider