Unvaccinated Georgia Couple Of More Than 20 Years Dies Of COVID On Same Day

An unvaccinated couple from Savannah, Georgia, who were married for more than 20 years, died from COVID-19, just hours apart, leaving behind two teenage children.

Martin Daniel was 53. Trina Daniel was 49. Martin Daniel died at the family home on July 6. Trina Daniel died later that night after being hospitalized.

Martin Daniel and Trina Daniel are survived by their two children Miles, 18, and Marina, 15, who also were infected with the virus at the time of their parents' deaths, according to WAGA, a Fox affiliate in Atlanta.

The family was infected with COVID in June and was hesitant about getting the vaccine partially due to a syphilis study from Tuskegee University in Alabama, the graduate school Martin had attended, his nephew Cornelius Daniel told ABC News.

The study analyzed the progression of syphilis unknowingly in Black men from the 1930s to the 1970s.

He had "a stubborn attitude toward vaccines in general," Cornelius Daniel said.

"He trusted the vaccines that had been around for a while," such as the polio vaccine, but thought the COVID-19 vaccines were developed too fast, Cornelius Daniel said.

The speed to approve the vaccine was due to decades of prior studies, as well as more than an $18 billion commitment by the federal government to accelerate research and fast-track FDA approval.

Despite this hesitancy, the couple was slated to get vaccinated in the middle of July, a week before they died, Cornelius Daniel said.

The couple had first met at Savannah State University in the 1990s. They had raised their children in Savannah, where Martin worked as a chemist and Trina as a stay-at-home mother.