Miles McPherson, the lead pastor of Rock Church in San Diego, California, has made an emotional plea for prayers for his wife, Debbie, as she fights to breathe on her own at a local hospital due to complications from a COVID-19 infection.
“Thank you so much for praying for my wife. She’s definitely had improvement in her appetite. She’s eating. She hasn’t had a fever for a couple of days which is amazing. She’s had one for every day for like 10. The nausea went away now it’s back, so … pray it goes away for good,” McPherson said in an update to his followers on Instagram Sunday.
“Her breathing is still struggling, so we just ask that you continue to pray for her lungs that they would heal. That’s what we’re waiting on, that she’d come home and her lungs are healed enough for her to breath on her own.”
McPherson first revealed his wife’s hospitalization in a post on the social network Friday during which he said that God knows “all the details” about his wife’s health.
“You know, I’ve been in ministry for a long time and I’ve seen so many people get help and I just want you to pray for my wife, Debbie, that God would heal her and bring her home,” the pastor said. “God knows all the details about her health. I just pray that he’ll bring her home and that she’ll be able to breathe on her own.”
In May, just a month after McPherson’s Rock Church held its first indoor worship service since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the church suspended indoor worship at all campuses except the Point Loma campus and microsite locations after multiple staffers tested positive for COVID-19 even though they followed state guidelines.
Speaking with The San Diego Union-Tribune after his church’s first indoor service since the start of the pandemic on April 18, McPherson revealed how happy he was to reunite with his spiritual family. Rock Church did not hold indoor services until state officials lifted mandatory restrictions a week earlier.
“It was so good to see our family back together,” he said. “It was like Thanksgiving or Christmas when you get to reunite with your family and reestablish your relationships.”
More than 5,000 attended in-person services across four campuses, and 300,000 watched Rock Church services online, the publication noted.
Debbie McPherson’s hospitalization comes as COVID-19 cases continue surging in the United States.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a 700% increase in the week-over-week average of COVID-19 infections in the U.S. since July 1.
“There’s no doubt we’re seeing a surge in cases now,” Dr. William Moss, a professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told USA Today.
While the U.S. registered an average of 10,000 new COVID-19 cases per day in late June, Moss said that average has now shot up to 125,000 cases daily due to many factors.
“The combination of the delta variant, susceptibility due to relatively low vaccination coverage, some relaxing of our public health measures, these all came together, and we’re seeing this wave,” he explained.
Dr. Larry Brilliant, an epidemiologist who was part of the World Health Organization’s team that helped eradicate smallpox, told CNBC that the delta variant is “maybe the most contagious virus” ever. He believes the pandemic won’t end soon because only a small portion of the world’s population is vaccinated.
“I think we’re closer to the beginning than we are to the end [of the pandemic], and that’s not because the variant that we’re looking at right now is going to last that long,” Brilliant, who is founder and CEO of the pandemic response consultancy group Pandefense Advisory, is quoted as saying. “Unless we vaccinate everyone in 200-plus countries, there will still be new variants.”
He predicts the coronavirus will eventually become a “forever virus,” like influenza.
