There have been countless tragedies arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. At least 258,000 people have died from the disease around the globe, according to Johns Hopkins University .
Each death is a heartache to a family, and the toll isn’t expected to ease any time soon.
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However, one family in Germany has reason to celebrate after enduring their own heartache for two agonizing days.
As the International Business Times reported , Andrea from Unterhaching, which is south of Munich, told German radio station Bayern 3 that her sister had caught COVID-19 while working in a retirement home, and she had been caring for her sister’s 11-year-old son while she was in the hospital.
Her sister’s illness had not gone well and she had spent some time in the ICU on a ventilator, but doctors said she was stable. Hours later, the hospital phoned again, this time to inform Andrea that her sister had died.
Hobbled by the heartbreaking news, Andrea also faced the task of informing her nephew, who has no father, that he was now an orphan.
“I was completely shocked. I left work immediately. I went to my family and told them the news first,” she said, according to The Sun .
“I had to tell my 11-year-old nephew that his mother had died. Of course, he burst into tears. How do you gently tell an 11-year-old something like that? There is nothing worse for a child than something like that.”
As is typical with COVID-19 deaths, Andrea wasn’t permitted to see her sister, but she was invited to go to the hospital to collect her belongings.
So she went down to the hospital and retrieved her sister’s wallet, keys, and a photo of her son. Just after she left, her phone rang again.
“It was the hospital again and the conversation started with the person saying ‘Please don’t get upset now … You should sit down. There was a mix-up. Your sister didn’t die. She is fine,'” Andrea said.
Andrea welcomed the news, but with some serious reservations.
The grieving family had already begun funeral planning, only to be told the hospital had made an error. Andrea said that she struggled with both the hospital’s explanation and its apology, and that the family had been through an emotional roller coaster.
Still, the news that Andrea’s sister was not dead and was in fact improving provided much relief.
However, Andrea and her nephew still haven’t been able to see her, and their trust in the hospital for updates has understandably been eroded.
“We deeply regret this tragic confusion,” a hospital spokesperson told Bayern 3. “The treating chief physician is in personal contact with the relatives. It is a human error in the administrative process.”
