Nurse at the Gold Coast University Hospital Immunology Unit, Topaz Stringfellow (pictured) has a message for young people during the COVID-19 pandemic — “don’t believe you are immune”.
The 26-year-old volunteered to spend a month on the front-line assisting with Victoria’s response to its growing number of cases – and was infected with COVID-19 in the process.
Ms Stringfellow had donned full personal protective equipment and worked many hours swabbing thousands of Victorians in clinics set up across community centres, parks, hospitals and housing complexes.
She said she felt fine when a routine temperature check raised flags, just days before she was due to fly back to Queensland.
“When we swab, we have full PPE for four hours at a time — that’s gown, gloves, face shield and mask. I didn’t know if the raised temperature was because I had just been running around,” she said.
“That night I started to get fevers, headaches and body sweats and I got tested.”
She said that for the first three or four days she only had fevers, headaches and a feeling of exhaustion. On day five she lost her sense of smell and got a slight cough and still had the fevers and the headaches.
On day six, she became short of breath and couldn’t even walk to the bathroom without struggling to breathe.
“I thought, I’m 26 and female, statistically I should be okay, but I got sicker than I expected,” Ms Stringfellow said.
“Part of me was scared; I knew some of the complications of COVID-19, particularly shortness of breath. I was scared I was going to go into acute respiratory distress syndrome.”
She said she had been naive in the beginning.
“I think young people think they aren’t going to get sick but in Victoria I saw young doctors get sick and end up in ICU,” Ms Stringfellow said.
“I don’t think some young people see how sick they can get or the effect it can have on grandparents or people in aged care. They don’t see how much harm their actions might cause.”
While she has now made a full recovery, she said she was upset by seeing people her age not respecting social distancing rules and guidelines on gatherings.
