CAMDEN, N.J. — No one thought Frank Talarico Jr. was going to live. Not his doctors, his nurses or his wife, a physician assistant who works part time at the Camden, New Jersey, hospital where he spent 49 days fighting to survive COVID-19. A 47-year-old police sergeant, he was not vaccinated against the coronavirus. Unconvinced of the vaccine’s merits, he figured he was young and fit enough to handle whatever illness the virus might cause. He was wrong. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from th
Sgt. Frank Talarico, 47, who spent 49 days at Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital fighting to survive COVID-19, at his home in Camden, N.J. on Wednesday, April 6 2022.
But over the next year, as some police unions tried to block vaccine mandates, at least 301 police, sheriff and correction officers died of complications from COVID-19, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, a nonprofit that tracks line-of-duty fatalities. Since January, COVID has continued to outpace other top causes of line-of-duty deaths.
“He would try and mouth words around the breathing tube,” said Jackie Whitby, a cardiac care nurse who was also in the room. “He had tears in his eyes. She had tears in her eyes.”About half of the 14 officers in his police department, in Merchantville, New Jersey, have been vaccinated, he said. The department’s chief of police did not return calls.“I say, ‘Just look at me and look what I went through,’ ” he said.
The last member of Newark’s Department of Public Safety to die from COVID was Richard T. McKnight, a 20-year employee who processed detainees. He was not vaccinated, said O’Hara, who spoke at the funeral.“Their 9-year-old daughter is left with no parents,” he said. “ ‘You get better, I’m taking you to dinner,’ ” Sailam told Talarico when he came off a ventilator for the second time.
The device used to remove it has only been available since 2018, said Dr. Joseph Broudy, who said the new technology enabled him to extract the embolism largely intact.Talarico and Lynch, his second wife, had been married for less than a year when he was told in late December that he had been exposed to the virus by a colleague. Soon, the newlyweds were both sick.