A ‘fit and healthy’ mother-of-two has died from Covid-19 after ignoring her best friend’s pleas to get vaccinated.
Nuria Daniela Gomes, 38, tested positive on December 2 and passed away just seven days later, leaving her daughters, Erica, 20, and Myra, 17, bereft.
Ms Gomes, originally from Angola, told her friend, Mena Tando, she had Covid on December 3 – but said ‘there was no need to worry about it’.
Ms Tando said she tried to persuade Mr Gomes to get vaccinated, but the mother-of-two was ‘concerned’ about things she had read on social media.
Ms Tando, 37, said: ‘I tried to persuade her to get vaccinated, but she was concerned. She had read things on social media about there being possible consequences in a couple of years. I am missing her a lot.’
Ms Tando said she dropped groceries off on Ms Gomes’ doorstep in Liverpool and kept in touch for the next few days.
By December 7 Ms Tando was concerned about her friend’s persistent cough. Then, she had a missed call at 1am.
When Ms Tando rang back, Myra said her mother had been taken to hospital. By 2am on December 9, Ms Tando was told Ms Gomes had died.
She said: ‘It was a big shock for me, I had been speaking to her all week and to get a call to say she had passed away I just could not believe it.
Ms Gomes’ daughter Erica recalled the traumatic minutes when her mother’s health dramatically worsened.
She said: ‘Mum didn’t want to sleep alone so we put a mattress in her room. We could hear she was struggling to breathe. I was panicking, but she said she was fine.
When we switched the light on we saw her hands were purple, her lips were purple and her eyes looked huge. It was really disturbing.’
The two sisters called an ambulance and performed CPR until paramedics arrived, but their mother died before she made it to Whiston Hospital.
Erica said: ‘It was all happening so quickly. I still have flashbacks and then I try to quickly forget.’
Myra said she and her sister prayed for their mother as she struggled. ‘Ever since we were little my mum has been taking care of us on her own. She is all we had.
‘She was so hard-working, caring, lovely, funny, she brought us up with respect and taught us everything we know. We were really close. She always heard us when we wanted to talk.
