36-Year-Old COVID-19 Patient Wakes Up From Coma, Regrets Not Getting Vaccinated

A North Carolina COVID-19 patient, who was in hospital for three months, has started making a miraculous recovery after coming out of coma.

Steve Rose, 36, was said to be among the sickest COVID-19 patients at UNC Hospital in Chapel Hill.

Rose was not vaccinated and he also did not have any preexisting health conditions, WRAL reported. He had spoken out of his COVID-19 ordeal, which started feeling like just a cold. However, it ended up sending him into a coma and on life support.

As he began recovering, Rose expressed his regret about not getting vaccinated. He said he went so far into the pandemic without getting sick that he thought he didn't need the jab.

"Almost selfish to not get the vaccine," Rose said in a video. “I mean, I just want to put it out there that this stuff [COVID] is real and it can kill you,” he added.

He was put into a medically-induced coma before Thanksgiving last year, and woke up just a couple of weeks ago.

“The last conversation I remember was talking about Thanksgiving dinner, I was looking forward to it,” Rose said, according to WRAL.

Doctors put Rose twice on an Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine, which supplies oxygen directly to a patient’s blood, as the COVID-19 virus badly damaged his lungs. This damage made it impossible to fix with just a ventilator. Rose also underwent dialysis twice because he had too much acid in his body fluids, media reports said.

Rose, who is still unable to walk, will require months of rehabilitation.

He thanked the doctors and nurses at the hospital for their help in getting back to life. “It’s changed a lot of perspectives… absolutely thankful to be alive,” Rose said.

The cases in the United States continued to rise after the Omicron variant was found. The highly contagious Omicron variant accounted for 99.9 percent of new weekly COVID-19 infections in the country, according to data updated by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Several studies have suggested the current authorized COVID-19 vaccines could provide strong protection against hospitalization and death caused by the Omicron variant.