‘Make sure my kids get vaccinated’: Anti-vaxx mother dies of Covid two weeks after husband

“Please make sure my kids get vaccinated.”

Those were some of the last words of Lydia Rodriguez, a mother of four in Texas, who died of Covid on Monday after deciding not to get the vaccine. Two weeks earlier, her husband, Lawrence, died of Covid in the same hospital, having finally requested a vaccine right before being put on a ventilator.

“Lydia has never really believed in vaccines,” Dottie Jones, Lydia’s cousin and a neonatal nurse, told The Washington Post. “She believed that she could handle everything on her own, that you didn’t really need medicine.”

In early July, each member of the Galveston, Texas, family tested positive for coronavirus, after Lydia and the children returned from a church camp. The kids, three of whom were old enough to qualify for vaccines but didn’t get one, all had mild or asymptomatic cases, but Lydia, a piano teacher, and her husband soon hospitalised.

Ms Jones, who as a nurse has had a front-row view in recent days as Texas once again becomes a Covid hot spot, tried to warn her cousin about what she was seeing.

“I knew she would never get vaccinated,” Ms Jones told The Post. “I was very concerned.”

Lydia died two days before her 43rd birthday.

Now, the fate of the Rodriguez family’s 18-year-old twins, 16-year-old son, and 11-year-old daughter are up to the courts. Family members have set up an online fundraiser to support the children, who are expected to get vaccines soon.

The family’s tragic story echoes reports from ICUs around the country, where unvaccinated people, the vast majority of current Covid cases, continue dying in large numbers. Some who previously expressed hesitancy have come around to the free and effective vaccine, while others, including, alarmingly, some health care workers, have remained resistant.

The state of Texas is emerging as one of the national Covid hotspots amid the now dominant Delta variant, with a positivity rate at nearly 20 per cent.

Texas governor Greg Abbott has fought local officials and banned schools from implementing mask and vaccine requirements, even though he’s also requested mortuary trailers from the federal government and come down with Covid himself in recent days.

“Going forward, in Texas, there will not be any government-imposed shutdowns or mask mandates,” Mr Abbott said earlier this month. “Everyone already knows what to do.”

Less than half of Texans are fully vaccinated, lower than the national average, and new cases and hospitalisations have exploded since June, nearing their historic highs set this winter. There are nearly 16,000 new cases of Covid a day in Texas.

Two Texas school districts, San Antonio and Bexar counties, the largest districts in the country, got temporary permission to impose a mask mandate, while a court considers the governor’s mask policy.

On Sunday, San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said that “regardless of the eventual outcome in court, every day our unvaccinated children are protected at school by masks, which have been proven to be effective, is a win for our community.”