A woman whose anti-vaxx husband is in hospital battling with Covid has pleaded with people to get their lifesaving jabs.
Alicia Ball made the appeal after William Ball, 52, contracted the virus in hospital after suffering a heart attack.
Although she had been jabbed, Mr Ball, from Mississippi, refused.
Mrs Ball told CBS This Morning her husband is in an “extremely bad” condition.
She said: “We didn’t [think the virus was serious] either, at first. I’m not gonna lie. We had no idea.”
And she told CNN : “We have really tried to, after this, talk to as many of our friends and family as possible that they should get it.
"I never really realised how bad it would be – how bad this Delta variant would be."
She said Mr Ball now plans to get the vaccine, but fears that he might not recover.
"It's just devastated his body," she said. "I wouldn't want anybody else to go through this."
Mississippi has the lowest vaccination rate of any US state, with just 34.4 per cent of people having had both jabs, latest data shows.
Mr Ball is one of 59 Covid patients being treated at the St. Dominic-Jackson Memorial Hospital in Jackson.
US President Joe Biden has branded the number of Covid deaths an "American tragedy", saying he hopes more people get jabbed.
He said: "Right now, too many people are dying or watching someone they love die and say: 'If I'd just got the vaccine."'
"This is an American tragedy. People are dying who don't have to die."
Yesterday the country saw 383 more fatalities, bringing the death toll since the start of the pandemic to more than 612,000.
President Biden has urged local governments to pay people to get vaccinated against Covid-19, and set new rules requiring federal workers to provide proof of vaccination or face regular testing, mask mandates and travel restrictions.
The measures are Biden's latest attempt to spur reluctant Americans to get vaccinated as the Delta variant of the coronavirus surges nationwide, infecting unvaccinated people in particular.
The United States lags other developed countries in vaccination rates, despite having plenty of free vaccines on hand.
White House efforts to urge the hesitant to get vaccinated have hit a wall of anti-vaccine sentiment, misinformation, and political division.
President Biden's decision to require millions of federal workers and contractors to show proof of vaccination is a departure from a previous opposition to so-called vaccine passports. It shows the White House taking a tougher stance.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), roughly 163.8 million people in the United States are fully vaccinated out of a population of some 330 million.