Meredith WadmanScience’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.When the COVID-19 pandemic descended last winter, Catherine Ross was filled with dread.
Her 36-year-old sister, Amanda Ross, has Down syndrome (DS), which makes her especially vulnerable to respiratory viruses. Amanda Ross had been hospitalized repeatedly with pneumonia.
In 2017, she ended up on a ventilator and nearly died.In April, she was back on a ventilator. She lives in a group home in Somers, New York and had been diagnosed with COVID-19 on 31 March.
The doctor told her close-knit family that, given her history, they needed to prepare for the worst. “It shook us,” Catherine Ross says.