AUSTIN, Texas — As COVID hospitalizations continue to rise and ICU capacity reaches its limits, doctors are scrambling to treat patients. 

Doctors tell Spectrum News 1 those COVID patients coming into hospitals are now not just mostly unvaccinated, they are also a lot younger and healthier than before.

This statistic is an all-too-familiar story for families who have lost loved ones to this deadly disease, like Bertha Delgado. The Austinite describes her boyfriend as man who loved people. Delgado is a community leader and activist. She says he was always eager to help out. 

“We were giving out free socks,” she said. 

During the winter storm the couple delivered pizzas and handed out supplies to thousands of residents as part of a relief team. 

“He touched a lot of people,” she said. “He had a lot of friends in the community.”

Edward Davila turned 55 years old just a few months before he died of COVID in May. 

“When I got confirmation in the autopsy that he died of COVID, you know, it really was a reality check for me,” she said. 

Delgado says he caught COVID in April and was sent home to heal, but he continued to get worse.

She says when Davila was admitted to the hospital, he never came out.

“When you’re not there to say goodbye to their loved one because they’re on a ventilator and they didn’t have the opportunity to say googbye to you, you know, it’s unfair. It’s unfair,” she said. 

This isn’t the first death in her family from COVID. She says her uncle died of COVID in 2020 after being exposed in his nursing home. 

“How many more times are we gonna experience loved ones dying?” she said. 

Delgado’s uncle died before the vaccine was available, unlike Davila. Davila was unvaccinated, despite Delgados numerous attempts to convince him to get immunized. She says he was hesitant about whether the vaccine worked and he didn’t think he needed it because he was “healthy.”

“When you start losing people that you love and are close to you, then you realize how important that vaccination is,” she said. 

Davila lived with his older brother, who got COVID shortly after Davila died. He was vaccinated and survived. 

“That was to me a proven statistic, it was reality,” she said. “A home where two individuals were under COVID and one was vaccinated and one wasn’t and one survived and one didn’t.” 

Doctors like pediatric infectious disease physician Dr. Donald Murphey say this is the new norm.

“We have a new strain of COVID, this delta strain, and people are saying that it is younger, sicker and quicker,” Dr. Murphey said. 

The chair of the Texas Medical Association Council on Science and Public Health says the elderly and immune-compromised were the first to get vaccinated, and most unvaccinated patients in the hospital are younger and healthier. 

“I think some people think, you know, I haven’t gotten COVID yet, so I’m probably okay and there’s no rush to get the vaccine, but that’s not right,” he said. 

Hospital beds and COVID ICUs are filling up at alarming rates to the point where they will soon be out of space. Cities in Texas with populations in the hundreds of thousands only have a handful of beds available. 

Austin and Travis County health officials reported Tuesday there are only two ICU beds remaining in a region with more than a million people. 

“I am worried that we need to go back to doing the things we did to get COVID better, which is not going to group things inside, wearing a mask, staying six feet away and getting everyone immunized,” Dr. Murphey said. 

Delgado fears for her family, many whom are still not vaccinated, and much of her Hispanic community isn’t either. 

This is the first time Delgado has spoken about Davila’s death to the public. 

It’s been tough for her to talk about it, until she decided she had to speak up. Even though she couldn’t save Davila’s life, maybe the story of his death can save someone else’s.

An earlier version of this story misspelled Dr. Donald Murphey's name. This has been corrected. (8/16/2021)