‘I think that she was failed.’ After the death of 13-year-old Emily Viegas, a ripple of grief and anger has spread across one of Ontario’s hardest COVID-19-hit regions

Emergency room physician Dr. Khurram Jahangir knew he’d soon hear the unique warning ring out over the hospital speakers — the surge in younger, sicker patients meant it was only a matter of when. The day arrived last week, during an especially busy shift at Brampton Civic Hospital: Code Pink. Child medical emergency.

The team did what they do best, responding with urgency to a girl deathly ill with COVID-19. But Emily Victoria Viegas couldn’t be saved, and the 13-year-old Brampton girl became one of the youngest Canadians to die from a virus that has ravaged her family and her hometown.

“After, it starts to sink in, and you start to feel like ‘What was that — what just happened?’” said Jahangir, speaking generally. “Because you’re almost numb at that time.”

Later the doctor cried in a quiet moment alone, the child’s death and so many others too much to bear. “All of these deaths weigh heavy,” Jahangir said.

The death of a 13-year-old girl has become a singular tragedy in a year replete with loss and daily death counts. On Monday, Queen’s Park held a moment of silence for Viegas, whose April 22 passing has unleashed fresh anger and a booming chorus of calls for government action to stop a virus that’s seen Peel Region become among the worst-hit in Ontario.

Viegas’s family is in mourning. As her mother lay in hospital suffering from COVID-19, Emily, who had the virus and pneumonia, was found unconscious by her 11-year-old brother Nikolas, according to family friend Victor Pinto. Her father Carlos is a warehouse worker, Pinto said, and the family is now left mourning a newly teenaged girl who liked to dress up in silly outfits and hairdos her mother would proudly share on social media.

But while grief is uniquely felt by those closest to Viegas, the ripple effect has been vast.

The COVID-19 death of a child has dealt a blow throughout Brampton Civic Hospital and broader Peel Region, where doctors, nurses, paramedics and hospital staff are already beaten down by sickness all around them.

By mid-April the COVID map of Peel Region was almost entirely red, indicating dangerously high test positivity rates — 22 per cent for Brampton and 17 per cent over all, compared to the average of 7.6 per cent in Ontario. This is the location of the warehouses and factories that have remained open throughout the pandemic despite workplace outbreaks driving up COVID-19 case counts and ICUs filling up with essential workers and their families.

“Emily’s tragic story is one of far too many #COVID19 related harrowing tragedies I’ve seen as ER Dr @ Brampton Civic Hosp,” Jahangir wrote on Twitter this week. The cumulative effect, Jahangir told the Star, is compassion fatigue, where staff feel like they’ve got “nothing left to give.”

Incidents like Viegas’s death essentially “re-traumatize people,” he said.

Every day, Peel paramedics are dealing with “just an immense amount of tragedy,” said Dave Wakely, an advanced care paramedic and the president of the local Peel paramedic union, OPSEU local 277. These days, it’s not unusual to have 75 per cent of the patients not only have symptoms but have positive COVID-19 test results. Interacting with a sick child — or anyone who isn’t going to recover — is “traumatic” for paramedics, he said.

Viegas’s death has also devastated people she never met, and moved them to act.

Toronto resident Sadie Berlin learned of Viegas’s death Monday then saw Premier Doug Ford’s government vote against a Liberal bill to introduce paid sick days (the province has since introduced three paid sick days, a move many say still falls far short of what’s needed). As the artistic director of a theatre company, Berlin has been working from home but knows so many can’t, particularly essential workers in Peel — “the government is not protecting the people of Brampton,” she said in an interview.

So when she set out to be vaccinated this week, Berlin wanted to honour a young life taken down by a virus before she could be protected from it. Having seen a photo of Viegas in news stories where the bespectacled girl is sporting a black cat ear headband, Berlin donned cat ears of her own as she got her vaccine — “a beautiful, young life wasted,” she wrote, sharing her photo online.

“(Emily’s) passing encapsulated for me a lot of things that were wrong,” Berlin told the Star. “I think that she was failed. When a child dies it always feels unnatural but this feels like a completely unnecessary death.”

Last week, Viegas family friend Adrian Goddard set up an online fundraiser hoping to raise $10,000 for funeral costs. The response has been overwhelming: as of Friday more than 2,000 people, some total strangers, have donated more than $130,000. “The people in Peel Region care. We are mourning with you,” one woman wrote.

Although he never met her, Father Regulo Imperial of Brampton’s St. John Fisher Parish spent three days praying for Emily and her family this week in private masses. “Emily is in my prayers,” he said.

The young girl’s death has also hit her school community hard. The Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board (DPCDSB) readied its Tragic Events Response Team, a collection of staff including social workers trained in grief counselling, whose help is limited by circumstance to video calls.

At Viegas’s school, St. John Henry Newman Catholic Elementary School, support for the grieving was bolstered with online prayer services and the reading of scripture, which led into moments of reflection and a chance for those who knew Viegas to share memories of her.

The situation is sadly all too familiar at the school. Almost exactly four years ago, 12-year-old student Daniel Rozario died from the flu. Near the entrance of the school lies a memorial for the boy, accompanied by red and white roses, which may soon be joined by another marking the passing of Viegas.

Maria Viegas, Emily’s mother, is a dedicated volunteer at the school and a “wonderful woman,” say those who know her. Pinto told the Star earlier this week that Maria has returned home to recover from COVID-19.

Lina Trinkunaite-Acharya’s children used to attend the same school as Viegas, and said the news was devastating. She can’t imagine a worse pain for a parent.

“I have been talking about this family tragedy with my family and can’t stop my tears,” she said. “God bless them with some peace.”

Viegas’s death has also reverberated throughout Brampton’s Catholic community. Shawn Xaviour, trustee for Viegas’s school and others, said he was “deeply touched by the tragedy.” Maria de Berardinis, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association, said she and her colleagues are all deeply saddened by the loss of one of their students.

“This has been very upsetting for our community,” she said.

Much of Brampton feels the weight of the child’s passing, too. Vasco Da Gama, a local Portuguese cultural centre, told the Star the entire Portuguese community is “mourning the loss of such a young and beautiful child.”

Dawn Griffith, a social worker and director of The Family Enhancement Centre in Brampton, which offers mental health services including grief counselling, said the pandemic may be the worst time to lose someone. It stripped mourners of nearly all the normal coping strategies used to process loss, she said.

“If these were normal times, people could get together, hold vigils, go to the funeral — the isolation makes this so much worse,” Griffith said.

For the community, Emily’s loss contributes to a “cumulative grief” that’s been building since the pandemic began. It’s also a grim reminder of the omnipresence of the virus.

“The scary thing is it could have been anyone’s daughter,” said Griffith. “There are so many frontline, essential workers here putting their lives at risk. They do that to provide for their families and in return they can be hit where they’re most vulnerable — their kids.”

As COVID-19 continues to spread in Peel, Jahangir, the emergency room doctor, worries for his fellow health-care workers experiencing natural human emotions but who are “suffering in silence.” He is concerned about a second pandemic of mental health crises, particularly among health-care workers, and said it was vital that additional supports be put in place now.

He and his colleagues are prepared for the possibility there could be another “code pink,” and he’s afraid of what impact that and other tragedies will have on staff, who afterwards are left asking: “Did we do enough? Could we have done more?”

“Trauma is internalized. It can be rekindled anytime something like this happens again, you know. I think it’s devastating for people,” Jahangir said.

Dr. Amit Arya, a physician who worked in Peel throughout most of the pandemic, said Viegas’s death is emblematic of the medical neglect the region has seen. Last year, Brampton had about one hospital bed per 1,000 residents, Arya said, as opposed to the Ontario average of just over two per 1,000 residents. Viegas’s father Carlos told The Globe and Mail that he hesitated to call an ambulance because of worries the local hospital was full.

There are other inequities. Until late September, Brampton only had one permanent COVID-19 testing centre, while Toronto had 17 and Mississauga had three, Arya said. He also noted that Peel is a region of essential workers, like Emily’s father — “people who have consistently risked their lives through the pandemic, who for a long time were blamed for spreading the virus instead of being given the help they needed,” Arya said.

Viegas’s death must serve as a wake-up call, Arya said.

“If this is something that doesn’t spur us to change the rising inequities in Peel, and especially Brampton, that were exposed in horrific and cruel fashion during the pandemic, what else will?” he said.

Wendy Gillis is a Toronto-based reporter covering crime and policing for the Star. Reach her by email at wgillis@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @wendygillis

Ben Cohen is a Toronto-based staff reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @bcohenn