Four Texas children are now orphans after their parents – who opposed vaccines – died of COVID-19.

Just before Lydia Rodriguez, 42, was put on a ventilator she made a final request. “Please make sure my kids get vaccinated,” she told her sister.

Rodriguez’s vaccine hesitancy broke down after she was hospitalized. She requested a jab for herself, but doctors explained that it was too late. She died on Monday, two weeks after her 49-year-old husband Lawrence succumbed to the virus. The Galveston couple’s beds were just feet apart in an ICU.

The Washington Post reports that the family was likely exposed to COVID-19 at a week-long Church camp.

“Lydia has never really believed in vaccines,” Dottie Jones, her cousin, told The Post. “She believed that she could handle everything on her own, that you didn’t really need medicine.”

Jones, a nurse, said she tried to change Rodriguez’s mind, but she was obstinate.

“It just breaks my heart that people are believing the misinformation that’s out there. The misinformation is killing people, and we need to get the truth out there,” Jones told an ABC affiliate in Texas.

“This is really happening in our family, and it is the true story of what can happen. I am not trying to scare people. I just want people to understand this virus is real, and this delta variant is more brutal that anything we’ve seen,” Jones added.

The Post reports the Rodriguez’s vaccine eligible children will soon receive the first dose of the vaccine. An 11-year-old daughter will get the jab as soon as she is eligible.

The Rodriguez’s heart-breaking story reflects a grim reality in the Galveston area: COVID-19 cases are surging and local hospitals are running out of ICU beds. About 500 people are being hospitalized with COVID-19 in the region every day, the highest number since the pandemic began.

Dr. Gulshan Sharma, chief medical officer at at University of Texas Medical Branch hospitals, told The Galveston Daily News that “the number of COVID patients is affecting how long people seeking treatment for other emergencies must wait to be treated..In some cases, people seeking treatment in medical branch emergency rooms have been waiting 48 hours to be admitted.”