RALEIGH, N.C. — There's one, sizable metric in COVID-related deaths that you won't see in the daily numbers.
It's 3,626.
That is the number of children in North Carolina who have lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19, according to data published by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
In some cases, children lost their only parent and source of support.
Jimmy Liles is one of those people. An only child to a single parent, Liles is 18 years old and a high school senior. As he prepares for his college years, the burden of adulthood is also weighing on him as he learns to keep up the house, pay bills and manage a farm.
His father was admitted to the ICU in early December.
"After a nightmarish 19 days, I got a call on December 22 stating that my dad had been put on a ventilator, under paralytics and sedation," Liles wrote on his GoFundMe page. "I faced my first Christmas without my dad, terrified at the thought that I might never be able to talk to him again."
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