(CNN) — The scene at Jacksonville’s main public library was haunting, recalled Louis Lopez. While waiting for a treatment with monoclonal antibodies against covid-19, he saw people so sick that they could not even stand.
“These people were in bad, bad shape,” he said. His experience Wednesday at the library, established by the state as a place for treatment, has made him even more grateful to be fully vaccinated.
“I lost two cousins to covid in San Diego,” he told CNN in an interview. “If it wasn’t vaccinated, I have no doubt that it would have taken me.”
Lopez has been sick with COVID-19 for more than a week with symptoms including swollen glands and a runny nose. When a persistent migraine got worse, he signed up for a monoclonal antibody treatment that he and many other Floridians have heard Florida Governor Ron DeSantis promote in recent days.
“Don’t wait until you need to be hospitalized,” DeSantis said Wednesday while visiting a West Palm Beach facility. “Get it early, get in and people are good at it and obviously stay out of the hospital, but it resolves symptoms for a lot of people very quickly to where they feel a lot better and maybe they weren’t on a hospital level initially, but they felt symptoms, This has a great opportunity to really solve it and I think it solves it in a good way. “
Lopez said she arrived at the library shortly before her noon appointment and spent more than two hours with dozens of people waiting for treatment.
“As time went on, more people started arriving. And it became clear that they were walking in without an appointment. Some of the people who came in were really sick,” Lopez told CNN’s Don Lemon on Thursday.
Covid-19 patients await treatment at a Jacksonville library.
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Waiting for treatment in the library
One woman in line was so ill she couldn’t even stand, Lopez said. Since he couldn’t stand up, he said that she crawled up to the wall. Staff members provided paper gowns to some patients because it was cold. One person, López said, was given a wheelchair because he couldn’t move.
“It really made the seriousness of this very clear,” Lopez said. “Not only that, but the seriousness of it.”
Libraries are usually places of solitude and silence. On Wednesday, however, Lopez described a persistent sound of crying and groaning in pain from some of those seeking treatment.
“That’s when I really thought, ‘This was it, when I read that this kills,'” he said. “If you die from covid, not only will you be alone, but you will suffer a lot. It really illustrated that to me.”
His wife Suzanne shared a photo on Reddit that she took while in line. Seeing and hearing about the scene in the library pushed things to the limit for her, and she said the entire ordeal has been stressful.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” he said. “People don’t have to be so sick.”
Lopez said she only has a headache now after receiving the monoclonal antibody treatment, and she gave credit to the staff who administered the treatments.
“They were doing their best with what they had at the time. You could tell that everything was new. It was a new situation. Everything is chaotic. But they were absolutely fabulous, and my hat is off to them,” he said.
The Jacksonville site is one of eight state-sponsored sites in Florida.
CNN’s Lauren Mascarenhas and Travis Caldwell contributed to this report.
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