Latina Mother Who Moved To Los Angeles Gets COVID-19, Dies Before She Gets To Hold Her Baby

She was healthy and had taken all the precautions that experts recommended to stay safe during the pandemic. But she was pregnant with her second child and contracted COVID-19 just before giving birth. She died without being able to hold her baby, who she was waiting excitedly to welcome.

Eighteen days after giving birth to baby boy Diego Becerra, 33-year-old Erika Becerra died on Dec.4 from the deadly infection in Los Angeles. She had recently moved to the city from Detroit, with her her husband and baby daughter.

The Los Angeles Times said in a report that Latinos were getting coronavirus at more than double the rate of whites in L.A. County. The paper said that by mid-November, "the age-adjusted daily case rate among Latino residents was about 274 cases per 100,000, more than double the case rate among white residents, which was 125 cases per 100,000.

Doctors made the decision to induce labor when they found out that Erika had breathing difficulties.

Speaking to KCAL-TV, Michael Avilez, Erika's brother, said, “The weekend came along and the doctor saw she wasn’t getting any better. They had to think about the baby."

Immediately after the baby was delivered, Erika was intubated. Avilez said she was not able to hold her baby boy. “She had a normal labor, she gave birth to her son but didn’t get to hold him because right after she gave birth, that’s when they put in the tube and then from there she just started declining,” he said.

Avilez is now trying to make people aware of the dangers the coronavirus poses, because apart from the one medical condition that his sister had —pregnancy — she had done everything right to protect herself against the virus. She never left her home and even when she did, she would wear a mask and sanitize surfaces she had touched, he said.

Erika's husband and her two children have tested negative for the coronavirus.

“She followed every rule in the book and still ended up catching it, and it’s sad, Avilez told CNN. “You got a lot of people who don’t understand what’s going on ... they all think it’s a joke until it happens to them or one of their family members.”

Avilez and his family had reached Los Angeles to be by Erika's side. “Towards the last moments, she was tearing up. I know she heard us as we prayed for her, we talked to her, we comforted her in the last moments,” Avilez said. “All my sister wanted was the best for everybody and she cared about lives. She didn’t deserve to go through what she went through.”

Los Angeles top the list of counties that have recorded the most number of deaths -- 8,000 -- from COVID-19, data compiled by the Johns Hopkins University shows. The county has so far recorded more than 466,000 coronavirus infections.