In less than a year of the corovirus epidemic, Covid-19 has already taken a heavy toll on the family of a St. Louis woman, killing her mother and two relatives, while also making her and four other members of her family ill.
Erin Griffin told NBC News, “The shortest and sweetest thing I can tell people is that this thing is real, and please save your potential in every way possible,” Erin Griffin told NBC News.
Griffin, 40, who lives in the St. Louis suburb of Fluorescent, Missouri, said Covid first struck his 72-year-old older uncle, Cornelius Brooks, who died of the virus in April while in a nursing home.
A month later his mother Vanita Griffin, 67, and great uncle Kenneth Dorch, 74, also died from covid-19.
“The biggest fear of my whole life was losing my mother,” Griffin told NBC-affiliated KSDK.
Griffin said she was diagnosed with an “upper respiratory” infection earlier this year, which resurfaced at the same time “when everyone had really bad symptoms,” and contracted a coronavirus infection while working as a caregiver for her family members. Felt.
Her sister, Landa Griffin, also contracted the virus and spent a month in a coma with Covid-19.
“My mother-in-law was in a coma at the time she passed away, so she had to wake up to the news of my mother’s death,” Griffin said.
Griffin’s 14-year-old son, 82-year-old grandmother and partner also contracted coronavirus and have since recovered.
Griffin explained Tuesday that his sister’s coma is parallel to another family disaster.
In 2017, Landa Griffin became the guardian of her granddaughter Daniana, while her daughter was seriously injured during the triple murder, in which her parents were killed, KSDK reported.
“[Deniya] Griffin explained that funerals were held for her mother and father at the time, so she didn’t get the necessary closure at the age of seven.
As the coronavirus returns across the country, Griffin hopes his family’s troubles will be taken more seriously by Americans: “This is real, and you love your family, and don’t think your life is right,” he said.
More than 158,000 Covid-19 cases have been reported in the state to date and 2,590 people have died, according to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.
