Sofia Burke, a New Jersey nurse, said it took one family member letting their guard down “for one second” for Covid-19 to infect seven of the eight people in her house.
On Wednesday, Burke spoke to CNN through an oxygen mask.
Burke said she had been treating coronavirus patients throughout the pandemic, but now she and members of her family — from her 2-year-old diabetic daughter to her now-deceased 98-year-old father — are among the more than 14 million people who have been infected with the coronavirus in the United States.
“We’re fighting a virus, we’re fighting a pandemic that will kill us,” Burke said. “We need to fight together to save our individual families.”
Burke’s family infections began with an act of kindness. Her mother gave a ride to an elderly sick friend who said had a cold. It turned out to be coronavirus, she said.
“My mother let her guard down for one moment,” she said. “And in that swift moment, my entire family was affected.”
Now, Burke said that she is struggling to do things as simple as breathing. Her 2-year-old daughter suffered high fevers, her son and older daughter felt sick. While her mother is at home with oxygen and unable to breathe on her own after six days in the hospital.
And her father died from coronavirus while on a ventilator.
“I understand that everybody needs to survive, and I understand that financial hardship is real, too, and painful,” Burke said. “But … wouldn’t you want to walk away with your family alive, healthy, without nerve damage?”
“You don’t want to spend the money you have on funerals and burying your loved ones”