SPOKANE, Wash. — The only child to die from COVID-19 in Spokane County is a teenage girl, but her mother though doesn’t believe the virus is what killed her.
15-year-old Abbi Watson tested positive for the virus 18 hours after she suffered multiple asthma attacks and went into cardiac arrest. She died at Sacred Heart Hospital last Friday.
RELATED: A child has died of COVID-19 in Spokane County, SRHD reports
COVID-19 is listed on the death certificate her mother, Stacy Nichols, shared with 4 News Now. She says her daughter had several pre-existing, lifelong conditions including asthma. Nichols says her daughter felt fine on Wednesday, but collapsed later that night. She went into cardiac arrest and was brain dead by the time she got to the hospital, where she remained in a coma until her death.
Nichols is convinced her daughter’s life-long health conditions killed her, and that the virus has become political.
She’s furious that Spokane Regional Health District counted her daughter as a COVID victim.
“She wasn’t a child that died of COVID, and that’s the point is like — the health department thinks they are cool and they can just say stuff like that,” says Nichols. “She had pre-existing conditions problems and who’s to say she really had COVID.”
Abbi is the youngest victim in Spokane County, and based on Health Department metrics, possibly the entire state of Washington during this pandemic.
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