'I'm sorry, but it's too late': Alabama doctor says dying COVID patients beg for vaccine

An Alabama doctor is urging COVID-19 doubters to get inoculated by sharing her experience treating dying patients who wish they'd gotten vaccinated.

"I'm admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections. One of the last things they do before they're intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I'm sorry, but it's too late," Dr. Brytney Cobia wrote in a Facebook post Sunday.

"A few days later when I call time of death, I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same," the doctor's post goes on to say.

Cobia listed the reasons why people are hesitant to get the vaccine.

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"They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn't get as sick," she wrote. "They thought it was 'just the flu'. But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back."

Cobia's post has received more than 7,000 shares on Facebook as of Wednesday evening.

COVID-19 cases nearly tripled in the U.S. over two weeks amid an onslaught of vaccine misinformation that is straining hospitals and exhausting doctors.

Across the U.S., the seven-day rolling average for daily new cases rose over the past two weeks to more than 37,000 on Tuesday, up from less than 13,700 on July 6, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Health officials blame the Delta variant and slowing vaccination rates. Just 56.2% of all Americans have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.