Michigan grandpa regularly walks four miles JUST to see his newborn granddaughter through a glass door
A Michigan grandfather has reportedly been walking four miles just to see his newborn granddaughter in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic -- albeit through a glass door.
“It breaks my heart that my dad can’t hold my daughter,” his son Joshua Gillett wrote in an Instagram post, sharing a photo of one of his visits. “However, as you can clearly see on my dad’s face, he’s overflowing with joy just to see her.”
Gillett said his dad, who hasn't been named, did get to hold the child before Michigan went into lockdown due to COVID-19, but only twice. “While my wife was pregnant, I don’t think an hour went by where my dad didn’t brag about becoming a grandpa soon,” Gillett wrote. “Now, his granddaughter is finally here, and the only things he can hold are the daily pictures we send him.”
Last week, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued a “Stay Home, Stay Safe” order mandating state residents to socially isolate at home or avoid contact with others during the outbreak. The order has also closed nonessential businesses and schools in the state.
Whitmer took a step further this week and declared a state of disaster, ordering schools to remain closed for the rest of the academic year. “Right now, too many people are out and about,” she told a press conference Thursday morning.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, Michigan has recorded 10,791 confirmed COVID-19 cases and at least 417 deaths as of Friday morning.
Meanwhile, Gillett is urging people to stay at home even if they are not worried about contracting the virus themselves.
“#Stayhome for the new dads and moms who can’t wait to have the world meet their new baby,” he wrote on Instagram. “#Stayhome for the grandparents who want to hold their new grandchild more than anything…#Stayhome for the great-grandparents who know time is a gift.
This comes after a woman who recently got engaged had to resort to sharing the happy news with her grandfather through the window of his nursing home as she could not enter amid coronavirus restrictions. The 22-year-old woman, Carly Boyd, was proposed to last week and she wanted to tell her grandfather about it but restrictions at the Premier Living and Rehab Center in Lake Waccamaw meant she could not show him the ring up close.
Boyd, therefore, decided to go to his window to show him her engagement ring as he was resting on his bed.
"I really wanted to be able to tell my grandfather because he has dementia and there's no phone in there that he has access to," she told KOLD. "I just really wanted to make an effort to tell him."
In the US, there have been 245,442 confirmed cases of coronavirus while at least 6,098 people have died as of Friday morning. Globally there are 1,040,639 confirmed cases of coronavirus with the count constantly increasing. So far, there have been around 55,188 deaths across the world due to coronavirus as of April 3.
For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. But for others, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, the virus can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death.