Survivor forming COVID support group

260
Grace Gomez and her family have suffered tremendous loss due to COVID-19.

Grace Gomez has had four generations of her family infected with COVID-19. She knows first-hand how valuable a support group could be, so she is starting one to help Maricopans cope with, recover from and prevent the disease.

Gomez, her mother, a daughter and a grand-daughter all have been infected with COVID-19, with her mother and daughter passing away from the virus earlier this year. She believes the city’s residents have the resources to help each other get through the pandemic together.

“I’d like to get a group together to talk about how we deal with the loss we’ve had, recovery, prevention, all those issues,” she said. “I would love to have a registered nurse or a doctor from the area come to educate us about COVID and the vaccines.

I believe there are a lot of people in Maricopa besides me who could benefit from something like this.”

Anyone interested in joining such a group can contact Gomez at 520-518-2015 or [email protected]. The group will meet at the InMaricopa office, 44400 W. Honeycutt Road, Suite 101, with the date and time of the initial meeting to be determined.

Gomez believes such a group will be helpful not just in today’s climate, but for the future.

“This is not going to be the last time we’re going to have a pandemic,” she said. “We need to learn how to cope with them.”

Source: CDC. Case fatality ratio, the proportion of diagnosed individuals who die from that disease, is a measure of severity among detected cases.


This story was previously published in the October edition of InMaricopa Magazine.