Athletic Teen Dies Of COVID-19 After 6 Months In ICU; Was Weeks Away From Vaccine

An athletic 18-year-old teen in Northwest Indiana has died of COVID-19 just weeks before he was eligible to receive a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.

Carlos Nunez Jr., a resident of Lake Station, Indiana, died Sunday at the Advocate Christ Hospital of COVID-19 after going through several medically-induced comas during his battle against the virus. He spent six months in the ICU, WGN-TV reported.

Nunez Jr. first tested positive for COVID-19 in April, just weeks before the state began administering COVID-19 vaccines to his age group. His 15-year-old brother, Pablo, was also admitted to the same ICU unit after getting infected with COVID-19. The latter is currently recovering. Both their parents were fully vaccinated.

“(Carlos) was Pablo’s caretaker, their father has Alzheimer’s at the age of 62, poor Carlos was the second man of the house,” Lon Bailey, their brother-in-law, told WGN-TV.

A report from the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office said Nunez Jr. died from COVID-19 complications with obesity as a secondary factor.

As of Sept. 23, the U.S. reported 21,814 COVID-19 hospitalizations in children, which represents 2.5% of all hospitalizations in the country. The admission rate among pediatric cases of COVID-19 is also rising at 0.9%, according to a joint report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

Beginning Sept. 9 and ending on Sept. 23, health officials in the U.S. reported 206,864 cases of COVID-19 in children, up by 8% in the weeks prior. Children now represent 26.7% of weekly reported coronavirus infections in the U.S.

Overall, there have been 5,725,680 child COVID-18 cases reported since the beginning of the pandemic. The figures represent 16.0% of the country’s more than 43 million coronavirus cases.

Currently, only children aged 12 and older are eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech. It is expected that the drugmaker will soon request emergency use authorization for the use of their vaccine in children between the ages of 5 and 11.

Since the start of the pandemic, health officials in the U.S. have recorded 43,459,200 COVID-19 cases and 697,840 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.