Report on 10-Year-Old 'Nurse' Who Died of COVID 'Incredibly Incomplete': Parents

A school report from Virginia's Suffolk Public Schools concluded 10-year-old Teresa Sperry wasn't exposed to COVID-19 as "class nurse," but her parents maintain their daughter was potentially put in harm's way.

About a week before she died of COVID-19, Teresa was given the job of "class nurse," responsible for walking students to the nurse's office at Hillpoint Elementary School. Her parents criticized the school for failing to get their permission before giving their daughter the job and dismissed a report that found she didn't escort sick kids to the nurse's office before contracting the virus herself.

"I feel that the investigation report is incredibly incomplete," Jeff Sperry, Teresa's father, told the Virginian-Pilot.

The report, according to Teresa's mother Nicole Sperry, is only three pages long when printed out, a length that the parents believe is indicative of the less-than-thorough nature of the contact tracing investigation.

During the investigation into Teresa's death, investigators interviewed the school nurse and Teresa's teacher, who was described as a long-term substitute. Both said Teresa was sent to the nurse's office twice on September 21–once to escort a student with an arm injury and once to retrieve an inhaler. Teresa "never" escorted students that had COVID-19-like symptoms according to the report obtained by the Virginian-Pilot.

The school nurse also said Teresa never came inside the clinic. She was required to sit outside in the main office and the report said there were no students with suspected COVID-19 symptoms sent to the clinic between September 7 and September 23, the day after Teresa went to the nurse for a headache.

Her father, however, denied that the school was free of blame just because his daughter didn't go inside the clinic. He told the Virginian-Pilot that the report didn't indicate anyone reviewed security camera footage so they don't know who his daughter was around while she sat outside the clinic.

"There is nothing in it about interviewing the security guard, who would have seen my daughter going to the clinic. They did not interview anyone else that would have seen her," Jeff said.

Newsweek reached out to Suffolk County Public Schools for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.

At the time of Teresa's death, both Jeff and Nicole were vaccinated against COVID-19 but it would be a month before Teresa and her younger brother were eligible. On September 22, Teresa had a headache and then developed a fever the next day, according to CNN. They arranged for Teresa to get tested for COVID on September 27, but the day before, her cough forced her to throw up so the parents took the 10-year-old to the emergency room.

"They did her chest X-ray and when they came back, they said that there was no signs of COVID pneumonia, her lungs were perfect, beautiful. They didn't seem concerned," Nicole told CNN.

However, within 24 hours of returning home, Teresa stopped breathing. She was rushed to a local hospital and then transferred to the Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters Norfolk, where she was pronounced dead.

While the school maintains that Teresa's "class nurse" role didn't expose her to sick children, her parents said that if the school asked for their permission, they would have said no. Jeff told the Virginian-Pilot that having a child walk students to the nurse's office during a pandemic is "insane."