Apex fire chief had COVID-19, urges vaccination
As fire chief in Apex, Keith McGee works at the front of the front line — at the center of every emergency in town.
So now that he has suffered through COVID-19 personally, and known the fear of struggling to breathe, he offers this message:
“I think people need to get the vaccine,” he said Wednesday. “I kind of want to put my money where my mouth is.”
McGee, chief since 2014, caught the coronavirus in early December. For the first seven or eight days, it felt like the flu. Not a cold with flu-like symptoms, he said, but the real flu.
“The body aches, all of those,” he said. “Extra fatigue.”
Then, after the eighth day, once the virus had moved into his lungs, the breathing trouble settled in.
He went to the emergency room at Duke University Hospital, where his X-rays showed patchy white clouds.
Three weeks later, he is back on the job, calling himself 85% recovered.
All of his firefighters were offered the vaccine, and he said roughly 60% will take it.
McGee got vaccinated Wednesday morning. He has an 80-year-old father to aid and a town to protect.
He’s seen what the virus can do, and like everything else in a fire chief’s life, he wants to come at it prepared.
This story was originally published December 30, 2020 at 12:27 PM with the headline "Apex fire chief had COVID-19, urges vaccination."