6-year-old girl dies after testing positive for COVID-19 in Tennessee

Mark Price
·2 min read

A 6-year-old girl in west Tennessee has become one of the youngest people in the country to die after testing positive for COVID-19, according to the Jackson-Madison County Regional Health Department.

Her name was not released by county officials, but Jackson-Madison County School System Superintendent Marlon King identified the girl as Gigi Morse in a release mourning her death Tuesday.

Gigi died during a nap, shortly after visiting a local doctor, the Jackson Sun newspaper reported.

“The doctor said she had a viral bug and to let her rest and eat as many popsicles and slushies as she wanted,” The Jackson Sun quoted her mother, Priscilla Morse, saying in a blog. “She went to sleep and she died and I don’t even want to breathe anymore without her.”

Gigi was a student at East Elementary School, according to a release from the Jackson-Madison County School System.

A GoFundMe campaign hopes to raise $25,000 for “final expenses” for the family of Gigi Morse, noting her death was unexpected.
A GoFundMe campaign hopes to raise $25,000 for “final expenses” for the family of Gigi Morse, noting her death was unexpected.

The girl’s death comes as school systems around the country are debating how to handle learning during the pandemic. Some are opting for online classes only, while others are considering a combination of online and in-person classes — with students and staff wearing masks and staying socially distant.

President Trump and officials in his administration are supporting a return to in-person schooling. U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Mitchell Zais said during a media briefing late July that “it is safer, healthier, better for students to be in school full time.”

“The default needs to be that schools are fully open and operation in the fall. In areas where there are hot spots, distance learning might need to be adopted for a reasonable amount of time,” he said, according to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

7-year-old becomes Georgia’s youngest coronavirus death, state health officials say

Madison County health officials report the latest round of infections in the county included a child as young as 3 years old, according to a Facebook post.

Forty-five children ages 14 and younger have died after testing positive for COVID-19 as of Aug. 5, according to data posted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Among the earliest of child deaths in the pandemic was “an infant younger than one year” in Chicago, who died after testing positive for COVID-19, according to a March 28 release from the Illinois Department of Public Health.

“There has never before been a death associated with COVID-19 in an infant,” IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said in the release.

More than 158,000 people in the U.S. have died after testing positive for the coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University, and about 4.8 million have been confirmed to have the infectious virus as of Aug. 6.