Nurses are sharing horror stories of unvaccinated patients battling COVID-19 in hopes they will persuade others to get the shot. NBC 7’s Artie Ojeda has the story.
Nurses are sharing sobering stories of what it’s like working in hospitals with COVID-19 patients who still refuse to get vaccinated. The hope is the stories will persuade those still hesitant to get the shot.
The heartache of dying unvaccinated COVID-19 patients was brought into the national spotlight by a Facebook post by Brytney Cobia, which referenced young healthy people with serious COVID-19 infections.
“One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine,” wrote Cobia.
“When I call time of death, I hug their family and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to get vaccinated. They cry. They thought it was a hoax,” Cobia said.
Get top local stories in San Diego delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC San Diego's News Headlines newsletter.
“I actually cried a little when I read that story. A lot of us have experienced some variation of that story, those of us working in hospitals in the past year,” said Andrea Muir.
Muir is a registered nurse at Sharp Memorial in San Diego and said she’s seeing firsthand an increase in the number of COVID-19 patients.
Muir recalled the story of an unvaccinated man whose oxygen levels were dropping and fought off nurses as they tried desperately to help him.
Local
“'COVID's not even real.' He was using all of his energy to argue with us about this thing being real, while it was literally killing him,” Muir remembered.
She’s hoping these kinds of real-life stories will help persuade people to get vaccinated.
“Please get your shot. If that’s all you can do to help this pandemic, please do it. You’re going to help countless others, prevent them from getting exposed and getting ill, not to mention yourself and your family,” Muir said.
Danny Plata has a similar plea.
“If I wouldn’t have had that shot, I probably would have died. It definitely helped out with my outcome,” he said.
Plata is an emergency room nurse at Sharp Chula Vista who contracted COVID-19 between his first and second vaccination in January.
He spent 41 days in a coma and had to relearn how to walk while spending three months in the hospital. He’s still recovering and has to use oxygen.
“People are dying from this virus. I’m a walking miracle. It doesn’t guarantee you won’t get the virus, but if you happen to get it, it will be less severe, you might be able to skip the ICU. It’s important to get the shot because it will save your life. It saved my life,” Plata said.
