Auckland 10-year-old Siaan Edwards-Ewe documents her journey with Covid-19 for whānau messenger chat. Video / Tui Edwards
An Auckland 10-year-old has documented her Covid experience on video to inform and comfort whānau up and down the country.
Since testing positive for Covid-19 at the beginning of the month, Siaan Edwards-Ewe has been making short videos and posting them to the family messenger chat.
Siaan's great-aunt Suzanne Edwards, who she has been staying with while Covid-positive, said Siaan's videos had connected and comforted their whānau all over Aotearoa.
Siaan's videos were posted to the whānau messenger chat. Photo / Supplied
"There's about 112 whānau on that messenger page from all over New Zealand, from down in the South Island up to the North Island, Kaitaia area," she said.
"She wanted to [make the videos] because she wanted to let the whānau know what she was going through as an individual, with the stages of Covid."
"For that collective group that were seeing them, it felt like we were going through the stages with her."
"And letting us with children know what a child of her age goes through because we hear it from adults but we haven't actually heard it from a child themselves."
10-year-old Siaan Edwards-Ewe documented her experience with Covid-19. Photo / Supplied
Siaan's mum Tui Edwards said the idea had first been raised with Siaan by her grandmother, as Siaan was one of the first people in the whānau to test positive for Covid.
"She said 'you should do some videos on how you're going' because at that point, we were the first bubble in our family that had Covid," Tui said.
"Siaan would do the videos, send them off to my mum and my mum would put it on the family chat.
Siaan Edwards-Ewe has documented her experience of Covid-10 in a series of videos for her whanau. Photo / Supplied
"Because my family were so conscious of Covid, having someone go through it and deal with it as well as she'd done, it was like 'wow, it's not as scary as we thought it was!'"
The videos were also a way for Siaan to stay connected with her family while they were separated among different houses, Tui said.
Siaan, who recovered from Covid several days ago, said she had wanted to make memories during the period of isolation, and to show her family what it was like to have Covid.
Suzanne said at times Siaan made videos even when she wasn't feeling well because she wanted to document all stages of the illness.
"There were times there that you know that she was sick, you could hear it in her voice … and there were times she was on video where it took a lot for her to be on there, but she wanted to do it."
"She wanted to put it out there and let whānau know because she was one of the first in our whānau to get it.
"And I think putting it out there to whānau and being so brave, even the adults in the group, we were all feeling 'wow, she's amazing and brave' at the same time as comforting us and leading us through her experience."
