“I thought I was going to be sick for four or five days,” Andrea Arriaga Borges told CNN Monday of her brush with COVID-19.
Instead, the 48-year-old Cameron Park, Calif., woman spent 65 days in a coma after contracting the virus in May 2021. Then, she was unvaccinated. Now she is a vaccine crusader.
“I was against it,” she told CNN’s New Day. “I don’t want anyone to go through what I went through.”
While her coma lasted a little over two months, the mother of five ended up spending four and a half months in the hospital. She was admitted to the emergency room a few days after she tested positive for the virus.
Borges didn’t talk for months and received nutrients through a feeding tube. At one point, doctors told her family that she had a 5 percent chance of survival and that she would likely not be released from the hospital until January. Luckily, she was able to go home in August.
“I still have a little bit of raspy voice from having a tracheotomy,” Borges said Monday. “I couldn't walk. I lost my motor skills and my muscle, dropped about 35 pounds, and came home in a wheelchair; re-learned how to walk again.”
Along with Borges, more than 3.7 million people have been hospitalized with COVID-19 in the U.S. since August 2020. A peak in hospitalizations came around this time last year with 16,497 reported daily, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
From Dec. 27 to Jan. 2 of this year, there were 14,775 daily hospitalizations for the virus, up from around 9,000 daily the previous week. The omicron variant of the virus has contributed to a recent surge and breakthrough cases in fully vaccinated people. Although easily transmissible, this variant is not expected to cause severe illness in vaccinated individuals often.
As of Dec. 30, around 73 percent of the U.S. population was at least partially vaccinated against COVID-19, 62 percent was fully vaccinated and a little more than 33 percent was fully vaccinated and had received a booster shot.
Before she became ill from COVID-19, Borges said she was healthy, with no underlying health conditions. Since her experience with the illness, she urges everyone to get vaccinated.
“The only thing I can say is just have an extra layer of protection and get vaccinated. Get the booster. I feel like everyone should have a choice, but at the same time it's about protecting yourself and others.”
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