HEARTBREAKING

Georgia 13-Year-Old Dies of COVID With No Warning

Porter Helms seemed to be in stable condition when his father delivered his medication late in the night, but two hours later, he was unresponsive and not breathing.

A Georgia 13-year-old became the first person under 18 in his entire county to die of COVID-19 on Tuesday. Porter Helms was quarantining at home, and the boy’s condition seemed stable, as it had been all week, when his father delivered his medications at around 3 a.m. Tuesday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Two hours later, however, his father found him unresponsive and not breathing. Paramedics were unable to save Helms. “That’s the first juvenile that we can actually say that died of the COVID-19 virus,” said Floyd County Coroner Gene Proctor. Whether Helms was vaccinated is unclear. The more contagious Delta variant has caused cases in the state to spike, and hospitals there are filling up with children, as they are across the South.