A pregnant nurse who was unvaccinated and her unborn baby have both died from complications related to COVID-19, according to news reports.
Haley Richardson, 32, died Friday from the coronavirus, two days after her baby’s death, WKRG reported.
Haley, who lived in Theodore, Alabama, with her husband, Jordan, and their 2-year-old daughter Katie, wanted to wait to get vaccinated for COVID until after her baby was born, according to WKRG.
Jordan told WKRG that she wasn’t sure how it would affect her pregnancy, explaining, “We were just worried that there may be complications from that standpoint with having a baby and once she was pregnant, so she was not vaccinated.”
Haley contracted COVID at the end of July and was admitted to the hospital while more than 6 months pregnant at the beginning of August. She eventually had to be admitted to the ICU, WKRG reported.
Jordan is urging other expectant mothers to get vaccinated after the virus took the lives of his wife and baby, WKRG reported. He noted to the news outlet that if his wife could have predicted the tragic outcome, she would have gotten vaccinated.
“It’s not easy,” Jordan told WKRG. “She just loved everybody.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged all pregnant women to get the COVID vaccination earlier this month, news outlets reported.
According to data from the CDC, pregnant women who contract the coronavirus run a higher risk of severe illness and pregnancy complications.
“The vaccines are safe and effective, and it has never been more urgent to increase vaccinations as we face the highly transmissible delta variant and see severe outcomes from COVID-19 among unvaccinated pregnant people,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement, according to The Associated Press.
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