A 29-year-old surgical technician set to be married this summer has died after not taking the COVID-19 vaccination over unfounded fears it would make her infertile.
Samantha Wendell, 29, of Grand Rivers, Kentucky was set to walk down the aisle in late August with her fiancé Austin Eskew, a correctional sergeant.
The CDC has confirmed the vaccination is safe for 'people who are trying to get pregnant now or might become pregnant in the future, as well as their partners.'
But still, Wendell was hesitant. While she waited to make up her mind, she caught COVID-19.
She spent her August 21 wedding day on a ventilator and died a short time later.
'Misinformation killed her,' Wendell's cousin Maria Vibandor Hayes told NBC News.
Samantha Wendell, 29, of Grand Rivers, Kentucky was set to walk down the aisle in late August with her fiancé Austin Eskew, a correctional sergeant
Wendell, who wanted to have three to four children, was scared off the vaccine due to the ever-growing claim that the COVID-19 vaccine effects fertility
Her cousin said her family is now telling her story in the hopes that it wont happen to someone else.
'If we can save more lives and families' lives, then this is the gift that she left for us to deliver,' Vibandor said.
Tragically, despite her earlier hesitancy Wendell had turned a corner on the vaccine and decided to get the shot after the delta variant surge, NBC News reported.
Wendell and her fiancé set an appointment to be vaccinated for the end of July ahead of her honeymoon in Mexico, but it would be too late.
Before her trip she held her bachelorette party in Nashville and when she returned home, just a week before she and her fiancé were set to get vaccinated, she began feeling sick, NBC News reported.
'Samantha had a heart of gold and when she set her mind on something, she let nothing stand in her way,' her obituary read.
She spent her August 21 wedding day on a ventilator and died a short time later
'She could not stop coughing,' Eskew said and when she began gasping for air, she was taken to the hospital.
Both Wendell and Eskew, who both had no underlying conditions, tested positive for the virus, but Wendell suffered the more serious symptoms and in a bid to stabilize her, doctors put her on a ventilator on August 16,
