Every day, Inez Vasquez visits her husband in the hospital and searches his eyes for signs of the man she married, the father of four who invested the past 18 years of his life working for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency in El Paso.

Agent Freddie Vasquez, 43, hasn’t been vaccinated against COVID-19. He tested positive for the coronavirus twice on the job, his wife says: first in March 2020 and again in February, when he was hospitalized and placed on a ventilator.

This week, he was breathing on his own again, but he has yet to speak or respond to his wife during her daily visits.

“I encouraged him to get that vaccine,” said Vasquez, 44, a registered nurse. “I am left to wonder if he had obtained the vaccine, would he have been left like this, would it have been as severe?”

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