Girl pleads for SOP compliance

KUALA LUMPUR: A 10-year-old girl made a video detailing her family’s heartbreaking experience of losing her grandfather to Covid-19 because she just wants to send out one message: stay home, everyone; take care of your loved ones.

“I posted the video because

I wanted to tell people, especially grandfathers and grandmothers and the elderly, to stay at home.

“I want people to know that the disease could take away the lives of anyone and my grandfather was among those whose life was taken, ” Phang Jin Ern told The Star in a phone interview from her home in Puchong, Selangor.

Her grandfather, 78-year-old Kaw Choon, succumbed to Covid-19 at Sungai Buloh Hospital in January.

He was hospitalised after being infected and later admitted to the intensive care unit with ventilator support for 14 days.

A few weeks after her grandfather’s passing, Jin Ern posted a 10-minute video in Mandarin about her family’s experience on YouTube.

The video has received 157,325 views as at noon yesterday.

“I was very close to my grandfather and I miss him dearly, ” said the girl, who didn’t even get to bid her grandpa goodbye as per the SOP during the pandemic.

Her mother, marketing manager Kaw Thien Thien, 42, said her father was believed to have contracted the disease from his friend who had tested positive for Covid-19.

“The main thing we want people to know is that we all play a part in keeping ourselves and those around us safe, ” she said.

Thien Thien said she was surprised when her daughter showed her the video and asked her to post it on YouTube.

“My daughter sometimes records videos about drawings and other simple stuff. She will then get me to edit the videos before we upload them on YouTube.

“This is the first time she has recorded such a moving video in which she recounts our family’s ordeal of losing a loved one, without being able to say goodbye. Her eyes were still red when she handed the video to me and I, too, was in tears when I saw the video, ” she said.

Her dad, said Thien Thien, was hospitalised for 18 days, four of those at a private hospital here.

Six of her family members, including her six-year-old daughter and 73-year-old mother, also tested positive for Covid-19.

“Thankfully, none of them experienced any extreme symptoms and they have since recovered, ” she added.