A fully vaccinated Michigan couple died from COVID-19, one minute apart and holding hands.
The husband, 59, and wife, 66, from Grand Rapids, Michigan, both got the disease earlier in September, before a family camping trip. Both had underlying health conditions.
Described by their surviving daughter Sarah, the Grand Rapids couple were churchgoing and outdoors enthusiasts who put family first.
“The love that they found together after a previous marriage is fantastic,” Sarah told Fox 17. “They were the people that you just looked at and you were like, ‘I want to be old like that, I want that love when I’m that age.’”
“[My dad] called me before our family camping trip and said he wasn’t feeling good but he thinks it’s just like sinus, and [Linda] caught it and she’s like, ‘He gave me his cold,’” Sarah explained.
“The third day they woke me up and said, ‘We’ve got to go because we don’t feel well.’ So I packed them all up and they left,” she said.
A few days later, the couple was hospitalized and placed on ventilators.
On Monday, they were taken off life support and were pronounced dead, The New York Post reported. Cal died at 11:07 a.m. and Linda died less than a minute later. Both were noticeably holding hands.
She always joked and said, ‘Well, you’re going to go before I am, I’ll be right there behind you, I promise.’ And she really was, like she really was right there behind him,” Sarah told Fox 17.
No vaccines provide 100 percent protection against a virus. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines show about a 95 percent efficacy rate against the coronavirus. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine shows an overall efficacy rate of 77 percent.