B.C. woman who tested positive for COVID-19 during pregnancy and nearly died returns home

A B.C. woman whose husband went public with regrets over his anti-vaccine stance while she lay pregnant in a medically-induced coma is back home in Fort St. John after delivering a premature baby.

The child remains in hospital in New Westminster. Krystal Binette says she hopes her story will encourage others to get vaccinated.

Binette, 39, was unvaccinated and 25-weeks pregnant when was rushed on Oct. 11 from Fort St. John to the Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, more than 800 kilometres away.

Doctors estimated she only had a 10 per cent chance of survival.

Binette was hooked up to an ECMO machine which replaced her lung function and placed into a medically-induced coma.

Doctors delivered her baby by emergency C-Section while she was under. The baby, named Skylar, weighed a little over three pounds at birth.

As his wife's life hung by a thread, Dwayne Binette was home in Fort St. John caring for the couple's other two young children and recovering from his own COVID-19 illness.

Binette, who describes himself as a former anti-vaxxer, says his family had been taken in by online misinformation about vaccines and underestimated the risk COVID-19 posed to them.

"I was pretty dug in. I was going to wait and see," he told CBC in a previous interview. "Obviously, I made the wrong choice."

Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has encouraged people who are pregnant, planning to get pregnant or breastfeeding to get vaccinated against COVID-19. 

Henry said Canadian and international data show an increased risk of severe illness requiring hospitalization or ICU care for people that get COVID-19 when pregnant. She said there are also higher rates of adverse infant outcomes, including stillbirths and preterm births. 

Binette returned home Nov. 27, but Skylar remains in hospital under observation. She says the memory of what happened to her in October still haunts her. 

"Every time [when] someone mentioned this, [it] scares me," she told host Sarah Penton on CBC's Radio West.

Binette says he's glad his wife is home, but said she is still recovering. 

"We thought that … she wasn't going to make it, so it's a difficult time, but we're pretty glad to have her home now." 

Binette says he expects his daughter will have to stay in the hospital until the end of December.

Meanwhile, he's asking people who haven't been vaccinated to get their shots as soon as possible.

"We still see that there [are] people that are stubborn and they don't see that this is a life-saving measure," he said. "If you're not going to get vaccinated for yourself, do it for your loved ones that you want to protect."

He says there are high levels of mistrust among residents of northeast B.C. where vaccine rates remain relatively low —  68 percent in the Fort St. John region — compared to the rest of the province where 88 percent of people 12 and older are fully vaccinated.