An unvaccinated mother has died due to COVID, leaving behind a husband and six children.
The woman, Crystal Hernandez, from Pasadena in Texas, was 27 when she passed away. She, along with her husband Rico Hernandez, had tested positive for COVID shortly after New Year's Day. She was pregnant with the couple's sixth child at the time.
Soon Crystal Hernandez began to feel unwell and experienced shortness of breath and chest tightness, her husband told Texas news outlet ABC 13.
After a visit to the hospital on January 4, the mom was immediately admitted because her oxygen levels were low. She was then diagnosed with pneumonia due to COVID.
Within days, doctors performed an emergency C-section to deliver the couple's baby, a boy called Koda born at 25 weeks, according to a GoFundMe donation page set up for the family.
"They said that she did fine during the emergency C-section," Rico Hernandez told ABC 13, saying that she was aware afterwards and informed that the baby had been delivered.
As of January 12, the baby boy was described as "healthy and doing amazing" in an update on the GoFundMe page.
Crystal Hernandez's condition began to improve over the following weeks, but then suddenly deteriorated. She died shortly afterwards, in mid-January.
Rico Hernandez described his wife as "very, very, very loving" and "always playing around."
He told ABC 13 that both he and his wife had not been vaccinated against COVID as "it all happened so fast and it was being pushed on us very fast," saying: "She was pregnant and so she had some concerns."
Whilst Crystal Hernandez and her newborn baby were in hospital, her husband had to miss a lot of work to take care of the couple's five children at home.
A GoFundMe page was set up by a close friend of the mom, titled "Help Crystal have the proper burial." As of Thursday morning it had raised around $8,200 out of a $10,000 goal.
Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in August 2021 that the COVID vaccines were "safe and effective," including for those who are pregnant and breastfeeding.
CDC analysis at the time did not find an increased risk of miscarriage among nearly 2,500 pregnant women who received an mRNA COVID vaccine before 20 weeks of pregnancy.
According to CDC data as of January 19, COVID cases in the U.S. appear to have been decreasing over the previous few days as well as the seven-day moving average of new deaths. The seven-day average of new patients admitted to hospital with COVID was over 21,000 between January 11 and January 17.
Some areas of the country are struggling to keep up with the huge numbers of cases and hospitalizations, with health officials in Oklahoma recently declaring intensive care units full.
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