JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Samuel Garza tested positive for COVID-19 in November and had just left a hospital in Jacksonville when he took a turn for the worse. The father of five went back to the hospital a second time. That time, his oxygen levels dropped below 85.
“Suddenly something happened,” said his wife of 20 years, Sheryl Garza. “I don’t know what.”
Mr. Garza was put on a ventilator and eventually went into a coma. His family said he never woke up. He died at 52 years old.
“Sam made me so happy,” said Mrs. Garza. “Not a day will go by that I don’t think of him or miss him.”
Mr. Garza loved fishing, rock music and his family. He was a kidney transplant recipient. He had diabetes. But his wife said his kidney was not affected by COVID-19. Instead, his wife said, the doctor believed he had blood clots in his lungs.
Like many COVID-19 patients, his wife said, he couldn’t be immediately tested because it would require the contagious patient to move throughout the hospital.
As health care workers have cheered for the recent approval and distribution of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, Mrs. Garza joined the more 20,000 Florida families mourning the loss of a loved one to COVID-19.
Mr. Garza’s death comes at a time when the entire country is experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases. A Dec. 6 White House Coronavirus Task Force report shows Florida was in the “red zone” for cases and warned mitigation policies “must happen now.”
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Florida has already surpassed 1.1 million cases, according to the state Department of Health.
For Mrs. Garza, there’s nothing that can ease her pain or bring back her husband.
“I just hope I can be as good a person as he was one day,” she said. “So I can meet him in heaven.”