Modern Healthcare Illustration / Getty Images
As healthcare workers in the U.S. began lining up for their first coronavirus vaccines on Dec. 14, Esmeralda Campos-Loredo was already fighting for oxygen.
The 49-year-old nursing assistant and mother of two started having breathing problems just days earlier. By the time the first of her co-workers were getting shots, she was shivering in a tent in the parking lot of a Los Angeles hospital because no medical beds were available. When she gasped for air, she had to wait all day for relief due to a critical shortage of oxygen tanks.
Campos-Laredo died of COVID on Dec. 18, one of at least 400 health workers identified by The Guardian/KHN s Lost on the Frontline investigation who have died since the vaccine became available in mid-December, narrowly missing the protection that might have saved their lives.
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