A Florida mother lost her 20-year-old son to COVID-19, and then 11 days later, her 22-year-old daughter also died of the disease.
“I put up with it pretty well during the day, but at night it really hits me,” Monete Hicks of Lauderdale Lakes told NBC Miami. “I’m so used to them being here.”
Planning his two funerals is difficult, he said.
Hicks did not immediately respond to an interview request Tuesday.
She told the Miami station that her son and daughter had underlying health problems.
A Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office official confirmed to NBC News on Tuesday that the primary cause of death for Hicks’ son Byron and my daughter, Mychaela Francis, was COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Morbid obesity and asthma are listed as contributing causes of Byron’s death, the official said, while for Mychaela, obesity, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were contributing causes.
Hicks said her son Byron had trouble breathing on June 27.
“I came over and checked it out. He was sitting in the living room on the floor. He was sleeping, but he was breathing very badly,” Hicks said.
He called 911 and Byron was rushed to a hospital where he later died.
A week later, as the family mourned Byron’s death, Hicks said Mychaela went to the hospital after she started having headaches and fever.
As the days went by, “everything broke down in his body,” Hicks told NBC Miami.
Mychaela needed oxygen, her blood pressure dropped, and she finally lost a kidney.
She died on July 8.
Hicks, who has four other children, said she believed Mychaela would recover because, like Byron, she was a fighter.
Now she is begging people to take steps to stay safe.
“Wear all the masks,” said Hicks. “Be careful, stay safe, take it seriously.”
On July 17, Broward County said in a statement that the number of coronavirus cases continued to rise, more than 1,300 new cases each day during the previous week. “Our hospitals are in or are exceeding their bed capacity,” the statement said.
The county had 42,121 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 517 deaths, as of Tuesday, according to the Florida Department of Health.
