Texas mom delivers baby after losing husband to COVID-19

AUSTIN (KXAN) – Emergency cesarean section and premature birth – doctors say that’s what some pregnant women are facing right now if they haven’t been vaccinated COVID-19. Concern is even greater now with the delta variant driving the increase in new cases.

A Texas mother is sharing her journey of getting vaccinated during pregnancy. This week, Maria Garza gave birth to a new son without her husband Jason by her side.

“It is bittersweet. Feeling his presence there was special,” said Garza.

On February 5, Jason tested positive for COVID-19. Garza got COVID last year, so she hopes her husband’s case will be as mild as hers.

“A few days later, he started having trouble breathing, especially at night. About a week later, he was taken to the hospital, as he literally couldn’t breathe. He cannot go. A week later he was put on a ventilator. So it’s a very rapid progression of the disease there,” explains Garza.

She ended up getting her vaccines in her first trimester, while monitoring her husband on a ventilator. Garza says the doctors tried everything.

“We were even given the opportunity to go to Florida for a lung transplant, but he was unstable so that couldn’t have happened,” explains Garza. “So in the end, he didn’t make it through. When he tested positive, I was 5 months pregnant with our son and it will be his second son. I don’t wish this on anyone. “

Her husband passed away in May.

“He was supposed to have a brief illness, and he didn’t. Any pregnant woman, as a mother, the first and foremost thing you want to do is protect your baby, and I was able to do that with a COVID vaccine,” Garza said.

Many local doctors in Texas are encouraging pregnant women to get vaccinated as cases increase. They are now seeing some pregnant women hesitate to get vaccinated, and say those women face severe COVID symptoms and are likely to become seriously ill in the second and third quarters.

“Currently, we have at least two patients admitted to the ICU who are pregnant with COVID. We know that COVID doubles the risk of intubation, hospitalization, serious illness. So pregnant women are definitely at a very high risk of getting sick, sicker than the general population if they get COVID,” said Thoppil.

He said the researchers were looking at data from tens of thousands of pregnant women who had been vaccinated, and they found no complications for the mother or baby.

“There are indeed new trials that look specifically at pregnant women now, but we have that data when we look back at those who have been vaccinated and we see no change in the results, meaning no increased risk of complications. There is no evidence of harm and we are also showing the antibodies passed on to the baby,” explains Thoppil.

He says new trials for pregnant women are addressing other variations.

“We have some pretty convincing data that this vaccine was 80 per cent effective in the Israeli trials for the delta variant, but more importantly people with the disease get very sick,” Thoppil said. light.