Actor Edgar Ramírez opened up about losing several of his close friends and family members to COVID-19, urging those who are able to get the vaccination to do so.
“My heart can’t just take more pain. I am sad, I am frustrated, I am devastated,” Ramírez, who recently appeared in “Jungle Cruise,” wrote in an Instagram post Wednesday.
“It’s been weeks and weeks of my family being played, tortured and jerked around by this cruel, treacherous and violent disease which mercilessly ended up killing them all,” he wrote. “I can’t stand this void in my chest, this metallic taste in my mouth, this crippling headache that doesn’t seem to soothe.”
Ramírez said all of the friends and family members who died — his aunt Lucy, his uncle Guillermo, his aunt’s brother-in-law Rafael, his grandmother Bertha and his Venezuelan agent Laureano — wanted to be vaccinated against COVID-19, but they did not have access to doses in Venezuela.
“Meanwhile, tens of thousands of vaccines are being thrown away in the United States because a large number of people don’t want them,” Ramírez wrote. “It breaks my heart that so many people in this country are willing to snub the very vaccine my family would have taken in an instant.”
According to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, Venezuela has vaccinated just under 4% of its population of 28 million.
“As my family and millions of people go through the nightmare of losing their loved ones because there aren’t enough vaccines in the rest of the world, my hope is that anyone who can get vaccinated, do so today,” Ramírez wrote, describing getting vaccinated as “an act of compassion.”
“Don’t do it for yourself,” he wrote. “Do it to protect those who are vulnerable, those with immune deficiencies, and all others who can get very sick if infected.”
Ramírez encouraged his followers to watch a recent virtual discussion he had with Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“If this aligns with your worldview and the way you handle your communications, I would respectfully ask you to watch it and share this interview with Dr. Fauci in your socials,” Ramírez wrote. “I am just trying to turn this horrendous loss and pain into positive action.”
He shared the interview, which is about 10 minutes, in a separate post on his Instagram page.
A version of this story originally appeared on NBCNews.com.