An Alabama woman whose 28-year-old son died of COVID-19 regrets not being vaccinated and said his last words were ‘This is not a hoax, this is true’

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A child receives a Covid-19 vaccine on May 13, 2021 in Houston, Texas. Getty Images / Brandon Bell

His mother said a “healthy” 28-year-old died of COVID-19 after not getting vaccinated.

She told The Washington Post that she regrets not having her family vaccinated when they had the opportunity.

Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate of any US state and is seeing a spike in COVID-19 cases.

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After losing her 28-year-old son to COVID-19, an Alabama mother said she regrets that her family did not get the vaccine.

Christy Carpenter told the Washington Post that her family had not been vaccinated because they had concerns about when it was published.

“It took years to make other vaccines, and the coronavirus vaccine was created very quickly,” she said. “It took watching my son die from the effects of COVID to realize we needed the vaccine.”

“We were not vaccinated when we had the opportunity and we regret it very much now,” she added.

Read more: Don’t punish a vaccinator – make choosing not to vaccinate more difficult

Her son, Kurt Carpenter, was hospitalized after contracting COVID-19 in March. He was put on a ventilator after developing pneumonia. He died on May 2. His mother was also hospitalized due to COVID-19, but she has managed to recover.

Carpenter told The Post that her son was otherwise healthy before he contracted the virus, and that he initially thought the epidemic was a “hoax.” His last words said: “This is not a hoax, this is real.”

Many people have lamented not being vaccinated after being hospitalized with COVID-19 or watching a loved one fall ill or die from it. Meanwhile, authorities are trying to counter hesitation in the vaccine and encourage people to receive the vaccine.

Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate of any US state, with about 34% of its population fully vaccinated, according to data compiled by the Mayo Clinic. As of Sunday, nearly 50% of the total US population, or 163 million people, was fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Alabama is also among a handful of states seeing a rise in COVID-19 cases as the more transmissible delta variant is spreading rapidly.

US health officials said it is now a “non-vaccinated epidemic,” declaring last month that nearly all deaths from COVID-19 in the United States are now among the unvaccinated.

More than 610,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.

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