'This feels like I’m living in a nightmare’: N.B. man urges vaccinations after two relatives hospitalized
A New Brunswick man is speaking out about the importance of vaccines after several of his unvaccinated family members contracted COVID-19, with two of them requiring hospitalization for severe symptoms.
Joe Gee lives in Carlingford, N.B., near Perth-Andover. He says the virus is ‘spreading rampantly’ in his community, leaving himself and his fiancée, who have both been vaccinated, to care for loved ones who have become sick.
"This feels like I'm living in a nightmare and sometimes I like to pretend that it isn’t real, but it's real,” says Gee.
“I have to keep going. I have to do what I need to do to ensure that this spread doesn’t continue and that people start listening.”
On Tuesday morning, Gee’s uncle was rushed to the Upper River Valley Hospital in Waterville, N.B. by ambulance – it’s the second relative of his to recently be admitted to that facility with COVID-19.
"I'm just glad that I got vaccinated and my fiancé is vaccinated and we're both alive and healthy to be able to care for everybody that's sick," says Gee.
"The contact tracing all goes back to the church, and that's where this all started."
Carlingford is in the Fredericton region, also known as Zone 3, which as of Tuesday had more than 200 confirmed cases. As of that date, 79.5 per cent of eligible New Brunswickers were fully vaccinated, with 88.4 per cent having received their first dose.
“A lot of people think I'm angry, but really I'm scared more than anything else, this is terrifying,” says Gee.
“If you’re able to get vaccinated, and your doctor says get vaccinated, then you should do what’s best for yourself and your community, go get vaccinated.”
The province recorded 68 new cases of COVID-19 on that Tuesday, bringing the total number of active cases in the province to 632.
There were also two deaths reported, both people in their 80s, one in the Fredericton region and one in the Edmundston region.
With 40 hospitalizations, and 16 in the intensive care unit, emergency room doctor Serge Melanson, who works at the Moncton Hospital, says the situation is ‘grave.’
“When the capacity of what the hospital can take in starts increasing even further, then they have to start looking at tougher decisions around cutting back on planned or elective surgeries as an example, or procedures,” says Dr. Melanson.
“This is not only something impacting the ER where I work, but every aspect of the hospital and all the services they offer that are impacted one way of another.”
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