A Missouri woman didn't want a COVID-19 vaccine for fear of side effects. She caught the Delta variant and died.
- A woman who turned down a COVID-19 vaccine utimately caught the disease and died.
- Tricia Jones from Kansas City said she was wary of adverse effects from the shots.
- Missouri has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country.
A Missouri woman who refused to get a COVID-19 vaccine because she was afraid of its side effects died in hospital last month after contracting the Delta variant, her mother told local news outlets.
Tricia Jones, a 45-year-old mother of two from Kansas City, died on June 9 after a month in hospital on a ventilator.
Her mother, Deborah Carmichael, told local media that Jones was concerned about the vaccine after hearing "a lot of horror stories."
"She was afraid of the side effects, I think ... I, myself, when I had the shot, it was rough, so it scared her and freaked her out. So she didn't want to do it. I couldn't convince her," Carmichael said, according to Newsweek.
Side effects from the vaccine are often a sign that the body is building immunity to the virus. In general, the coronavirus vaccines produce mild to moderate side effects that shouldn't last more than a few days.
This chart shows which side effects to expect based on your age, manufacturer, and dose.
Jones' 18-year-old daughter, Adriana, said she hopes no one else will "go through what we went through... Especially with the variant," Newsweek reported.
Missouri is one of the five states with the lowest vaccination rates in the US. Health experts there are racing to get people vaccinated as the Delta variant is taking hold.
The number of positive COVID-19 cases in Missouri has been spiking in the last two weeks. As of July 1, the seven-day average of new cases hit 898, up from 511 three weeks earlier, data from Johns Hopkins University shows.
"Unfortunately, the arrival of the Delta variant in Missouri is driving transmission of the virus, and is resulting in increased illness and hospitalization among a younger population and the unvaccinated," Herb Kuhn, Missouri Hospital Association President, and CEO, said in a statement.