Three generations, (from left to right) Genoveva Calloway, daughter Petra Gonzales and niece Vanesa Quintero, live side by side in San Pablo, California. Their extended family recently suffered a second wave of COVID-19 infections a year after the first.
Beth LaBerge / KQED
hide captions
switch captions
Beth LaBerge / KQED
Three generations, (from left to right) Genoveva Calloway, daughter Petra Gonzales and niece Vanesa Quintero, live side by side in San Pablo, California. Their extended family recently suffered a second wave of COVID-19 infections a year after the first.
Beth LaBerge / KQED
On a Friday afternoon in early October this year, 8-year-old Maricia Redondo came home from her third grade in the San Francisco Bay Area with puffy eyes, a runny nose and a cough.
Vanessa Quintero, 31-year-old Maricia’s mother, said: ‘On Saturday morning we both went to get checked. “Our results came back on Monday that we were both positive.”
Vanessa stared in amazement at her phone and dialed back the doctor’s test results hotline, in disbelief. “This is so wrong,” she thought. “I hung up and dialed again. It was positive. This was false. I hung up again. And then I did it again!”
She felt nervous for two reasons. First, her extended family fought a fierce battle against COVID-19 last fall – in the fall of 2020. The virus moved quickly and furiously through the neighborhoods of the elite. their labor at the time, in the East Bay city of San Pablo. Four generations of Vanessa’s family live side by side in three different houses there, all connected by backyards.
Vanessa is also extremely scared because she cannot understand another round of treatment to fight a more dangerous variant than what she has faced before. The pandemic has Latino families are disproportionately affected throughout the US, and delta is now the predominant variation in the US, according to US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is twice as contagious and can cause more serious illnesses than earlier variants in unvaccinated people.
The family misfortune is strange. Research showed immunity against natural infections lasting about a year. And here it’s almost exactly the same time of year and family battling COVID-19 again.
“Reinfection is one thing,” Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “It can show more when the variation in town looks different enough from previous variations. Or enough time has passed since you first had it, [and] Immunity has weakened. “He said a second infection is not common yet, but doctors are starting to see more cases.
Recent computer models research suggests that people who have been infected with the virus could be reinfected within a year or two if they do not wear a mask or are not vaccinated. The findings suggest that the risk of a second attack increases over time. A person has a 5% chance of contracting the virus four months after their first infection, but a 50% chance 17 months later.
“The second time, it was even scarier because I was vaccinated,” Vanessa said, referring to the family’s second wave of infections in October 2021. “Her father was vaccinated. We were protected. in that sense, but she [Maricia] Not.”
Her 8-year-old daughter is still too young to qualify for the vaccine. This fall, the little girl lay in bed wheezing. Vanessa has tripled Maricia’s asthma medication and her parents are also self-isolating at home. Vanessa shivered when she had to tell her mother and grandmother about her positive second round test result.
Family’s first battle with COVID
During a family gathering on Halloween in 2020, Maricia complained that she wasn’t feeling well. Over the next few days, Vanessa and Vanessa’s partner, mother, two cousins, two aunts, uncles and two grandmothers all tested positive for COVID-19. In the end, at least 13 family members were infected with the virus at the time, and some became quite ill.
Many family members had to be taken to the hospital.
Vanessa, like her 8-year-old daughter Maricia, who has asthma, is the first person to need urgent care. “I was on the floor,” Vanessa recalls. “I can’t even say ‘I’m hungry’ without coughing.”
After that, Vanessa’s 51-year-old mother, Petra Gonzales, was almost unlucky.
Petra said: “I had a very high fever. “There was a time when I fell asleep and I was okay if I didn’t wake up.”
In the last year Due to COVID, Petra landed in the ER with severe dehydration. Soon after, she heard that her 71-year-old mother, Genoveva Calloway, needed hospital care for dangerously low oxygen levels and was being treated at another hospital across town.
Unlike Petra and Vanessa, who were not hospitalized for a long time in 2020, and slowly recovered at home, Genoveva’s condition is critical. She spent day after day under the close supervision of doctors and nurses.
“It really hurts not being able to help my family, because we always help each other,” Genoveva said, her voice cracking with emotion. “We were always there for each other. It was horrible.”
Finally, after nearly two weeks in the hospital, Genoveva was discharged. She was still connected to an oxygen machine when the nurses took her out. When Genoveva and Petra greeted each other in the street, they hugged each other intensely.
Genoveva said: “She hugged me very tightly. “I’ll never forget that. We missed each other so much.”
However, a year later, Genoveva is still recovering. Now she is suffering from interstitial lung disease. That’s why another wave of the virus this year is a terrifying possibility.
Fewer family members get sick a second time – they record vaccinations
Fortunately, the family’s worst fears didn’t play out. Genoveva was out of town when her niece, Maricia, brought the virus home this time, and Maricia herself has recovered. The other adults did not develop symptoms – they credit the COVID vaccinations they were able to receive before the delta spiked this fall. Research published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that vaccines protect against infection better than natural infections. However, if a breakthrough infection happens after someone is vaccinated, it acts like a natural “booster” and as a result hybrid immunity according to Chin-Hong. He suggests that most patients who are not immunocompromised should wait three months until a recent infection before receiving a booster shot or shot.
“Each time we are exposed, whether to an infection or a vaccine, improves our ability to fight off infection the next time around,” he said. Dr. Julie Parsonnet, a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at Stanford University.
But Parsonnet also notes that there are a lot of variables at play. First, weakened immunity. Second, viruses can mutate. Third, no vaccine provides 100% protection, and shots may not provide equal protection for everyone.
“There are some people, including the elderly, the immunocompromised, and people on dialysis, who really can’t get a good immune response,” says Parsonnet. “They’re also always at risk. So each immunized child helps protect everyone else in the household they may live with or their neighbours.”
Multigenerational living is common in Genoveva’s community in the Bay Area. And her city, San Pablo, is a hot spot in Contra Costa County, where 1 out of 11 people tested positive for coronavirus. At the height of the pandemic, almost 800 people tested positive in the county Daily.
“Our neighborhood has three or four generations living in the same house,” says Genoveva.
She says her recent booster shot has given her more peace of mind. Genoveva is looking forward to the day when her niece and the rest of the family are finally vaccinated.
