BOSTON (WHDH) - A Boston police officer who spent weeks hooked up to a ventilator before overcoming coronavirus is urging the public to take the pandemic seriously, especially with the holiday season fast approaching.
Officer Omar Borges, 38, says he drove himself to Milton Hospital in March because he was feeling under the weather.
“I remember being tested and them telling me that I was positive,” Borges recalled. “I woke up 20 days later at a different hospital.”
Borges, a husband and father of four, was put into a medically-induced coma and hooked up to a ventilator.
“COVID is 100 percent real. COVID doesn’t see gender. It doesn’t see race,” Borges said.
Borges was released from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center on April 24 following a monthlong battle with the virus.
“Other than the birth of my children, it was probably one of the most important days of my life,” he said of his hospital discharge.
Borges believes he contracted the virus while working within the Boston Police Department’s drug control unit.
“As a police officer, you find yourself in dangerous situations, but ever being sick from contracting a virus…No, I never thought of that,” Borges said.
While Borges was hospitalized, fellow Boston police officer Jose Fontanez passed away from COVID-19.
Borges says he is lucky to be able to ring in Christmas with his immediate family. He is now asking others not to take risks with holiday celebrations that could spread the disease.
“Just think about the effect it will be on someone’s family if they contract COVID,” Borges said. “Next year is a new year.”
Borges has not yet returned to the job because he is still rehabbing.
Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 193 COVID cases within the police department.
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