By Wilson Wong -
NBC News
For his 12th birthday,
Gavin Roberts had a request: get vaccinated against the coronavirus that killed his father a year ago
.
On Sunday, when she reached the required age to get vaccinated, her wish came true.
Alice Roberts, Gavin's mother, told the NBC News affiliate, the sister network of Noticias Telemundo, in New York that her son's decision was strongly influenced by the death of his father early in the pandemic.
"I asked him over and over what he wanted for his birthday," he said.
"He always replied that he wanted the vaccine, that we were going to get it."
Charles 'Rob' Roberts, a Glen Ridge police officer and Gavin's father, died of COVID-19 on May 11
, three weeks after collapsing at his home in late April, Alice wrote in a column published in the local outlet. NJ.com on Sunday.
He was 45 years old.
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Alice said her husband was in good health and took the virus "very seriously," but at the time he was infected, tests for COVID-19 were scarce and vaccines were not yet available.
Gavin is one of more than 386 million people who have received a dose of the vaccine in the United States
, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
As of Sept. 15, about 12.7 million children under the age of 18, or about
54% of adolescents ages 12 to 17, have received at least one dose of the virus vaccine
, according to an analysis by CDC data conducted by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
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As cases have risen in the United States in recent months, on Monday, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their two-dose COVID-19 vaccine was safe and showed a “robust” antibody response in children ages 5 to 11.
Alice, an elementary school teacher who is also vaccinated, said she hopes her son's story will encourage others to follow her example and avoid further tragedies.
[USA. buys 500 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to double its donations to disadvantaged countries]
"Seeing us, I hope people personalize it and know it's real," Alice said.
“We are not actors.
It happened to us and it can happen to anyone ”.
“If we can turn a sad and horrible moment in our lives into something that helps people, we want to do it.
We believe that
the only way out of this pandemic is to get as many people as possible vaccinated
, "he added.
