When a 7-year-old in Utah tested positive for the coronavirus, his mother vented her frustration on social media. Low vaccination rates in her state are to blame, she says.

By Amanda Morris

On the July evening that he was diagnosed with Covid-19, 7-year-old Ethan Chandra lay in bed with a high fever next to his mother, holding her hand and whispering, “I’m scared I’m going to die.”

His mother, Alison Chandra, 38, didn’t know what to say. Although a vast majority of children his age who test positive for the coronavirus either don’t have symptoms or fully recover, Ethan has heart and lung defects that make him especially vulnerable.

His family in Lehi, Utah, has spent much of the past year and a half at home to keep him safe. He and his sister studied at home and went outside only to play with a few trusted friends, wearing masks and staying distanced. In November, Ethan’s parents tested positive for the virus after his father briefly returned to work in person, but they managed to avoid infecting their children. Since then, both parents have both been working from home.

But recently, Ethan got Covid-19 anyway. On social media, Ms. Chandra posted photos of him in a special pink medical vest and nebulizer, and blamed low vaccination rates in Utah, where about 45 percent of the eligible population is fully vaccinated, for his illness.

“There literally are not words for the frustration but also the fury that I feel that this has gone on as long as it has,” she said in an interview. “It didn’t have to be this way. It didn’t.”

The Delta variant has led to a surge in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations across the country, leaving families with high-risk children who can’t be vaccinated especially concerned. Like Ms. Chandra, a growing number have shared their stories online, accompanied by desperate pleas for people to become inoculated, for the sake of their children.

Many parents say they are angry and exhausted from trying to keep their children safe while balancing the emotional trauma of more than a year of isolation.

“We were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” Ms. Chandra said, “and we were telling our kids it was worth it, you did the right thing and you stayed safe, and now it just feels like it was for nothing.”

Elena Hung, 43, of Silver Spring, Md., knows Covid could be deadly for her daughter Xiomara, 7, who has heart issues and chronic lung and kidney disease and breathes through a tracheotomy. Ms. Hung is the executive director and co-founder of Little Lobbyists, a national nonprofit advocacy group of families with disabled and medically complex children.

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