Grieving Josh Willis urges public to get Covid jab after wife's death

Samantha and Josh Willis. The unvaccinated mother died from coronavirus shortly after giving birth. Picture: PA

The husband of a Derry woman who died with the coronavirus shortly after giving birth is encouraging everyone to get a Covid-19 vaccine.

Josh Willis was speaking after his wife, Samantha, 35, died with Covid-19 in hospital after giving birth to their fourth child. 

She was buried in her home city in a moving ceremony this week while her two-week-old daughter, Eviegrace was baptised in the same service.

The grieving widower told RTÉ’s Today show that his wife Samantha has not been vaccinated - as in the early stages of her pregnancy that had been the public health advice. 

When that public health advice changed, Samantha Willis was 28 weeks pregnant and she and her husband thought it was safe not to get the vaccine.

“We were so close to the end and we had been so careful,” said Josh Willis who had already been doubly vaccinated. He said the couple had decided to wait until after the baby was born for Samantha to get the vaccine. 

Mr Willis said it was his wife's choice not to get the vaccine as it was her body and she was carrying the baby. “We thought that we were all relatively safe,” he said.  

New figures published this week showed almost one in 10 (9.5%) Covid-19 patients in Intensive Care Units in Irish hospitals since the end of June are pregnant women. 

Maternity hospitals have reported vaccination levels as low as one in three among pregnant in-patients. 

It had been hoped up to 60% of pregnant women would get vaccinated.

The low rate of vaccine uptake in pregnant women has been described as a concern compared with the high levels of vaccination rates in other parts of the population. 

Describing how his family contracted the virus, Mr Willis said he tested positive for the virus on August 1, while their four-year-old daughter Liliana tested negative twice that week. 

The couple thought that Samantha had picked up a bug from Liliana when she began to display “flu-like symptoms”. 

He had no symptoms at first, but within a week he had lost his sense of taste and smell. “Sam was worried about me because I have asthma. She was the type who worried about everyone else,” said Mr Willis. 

'All the signs were positive'

However, on the morning of August 3, Samantha became breathless and he brought her to the doctor who sent her to hospital. Later that week she delivered Eviegrace, and “all the signs were positive”. 

Sadly, within days “she took a dip” and was sent back to ICU where she passed away a week later, said Mr Willis.  The family had communicated via Facetime and text and Mr Willis had thought that his wife was getting better as she looked healthier. 

She didn’t tell me she was scared, but she told her mother that she had been afraid she was going to die (when she was first admitted to ICU) 

Mr Willis had just visited a church with Liliana who wanted to light a candle for her mother when he received the call that she had taken a turn for the worse. 

Liliana was in the car with him as he tried to talk with a doctor and he had to tell her: “Mammy might die”.

“Her face dropped, she was on the verge of crying. She asked who will be my Mammy then? I told her ‘she’s always going to be your Mammy'.” 

The couple’s two older children Holly and Shay were “obviously devastated” but the family was fortunate to have a wide support network of family and friends, he said, who have set up a GoFundMe campaign to help Josh and his children through their ordeal.

By the time Mr Willis got to ICU, his wife was in a coma and lying on her stomach, but he continued to speak to her, holding her hand and telling her that "we all loved her”. 

As it became obvious to him that his wife was not going to recover, he said that he promised her “that we would do our best to make her proud”. Mr Willis said that he hoped that his family’s story would help people, whether pregnant or not, to make the decision to get vaccinated. 

“I hope our story can help, that we can make Samantha proud, that we can save even one person,” he said. 

Mr Willis said he did not think that the medical professionals would be recommending a vaccine if it was not safe, so as far as he was concerned there was no choice, people should get vaccinated.

The family had a lot of good memories of Samantha, he said, and he hoped she was now looking down “proud of how we’ve coped so far”.