An Alabama man who had a heart emergency reportedly died last month after 43 hospitals with full intensive care units removed him.
Ray DeMonia’s daughter told the Washington Post that her father could not find a bed available for the ICU because Alabama hospitals were flooded with COVID-19 patients, especially those who were not vaccinated.
DeMonia’s wife received a call twelve hours after she was admitted to Cullman Regional Medical Center, notifying her that after calling 43 hospitals, no specialized cardiac ICU beds were available.
As a result, DeMonia was eventually taken to a hospital in Mississippi, about 200 miles away, for specialized treatment.
He died on September 1, three days before his 74th birthday.
Raven DeMonia, her daughter, told the Post that it was “shocking” for the family to know that dozens of ICUs were unable to treat her father.
Jennifer Malone, a spokeswoman for Cullman Regional, confirmed to the Post that DeMonia was “a patient in our care and was taken to a different center,” adding that the level of care she needed was not available at Cullman Regional. “.
He said circumstances like the ones DeMonia experienced have been a “continuing problem” for Cullman’s doctors and other hospitals in the state.
“When patients are transported to other facilities to receive the care they need, this becomes increasingly difficult because all hospitals experience a lack of bed space,” he told the Post.
Alabama is experiencing an increase in COVID-19 cases largely due to the highly contagious delta variant, which is now the dominant strain in the entire U.S.
Nearly 2,800 people in Alabama were hospitalized Sunday with COVID-19, according to the Post, with 768 of those in the ICU.
According to the newspaper, the state averages 2,641 new infections a day, a decrease from its previous seven-day average for daily cases.
Alabama is among the states with the lowest vaccination rates: only 40.2 percent of its population is fully vaccinated, the fourth lowest inoculation rate in the country, ahead of only Idaho, West Virginia and Wyoming. , according to data compiled by the Post. About 54 percent of the eligible U.S. population is vaccinated.
DeMonia’s daughter told the newspaper that her father was vaccinated against the virus and that now the family is urging others to do the same.
“In honor of Ray, please get vaccinated if you don’t, in an effort to free up resources for non-COVID-related emergencies,” the family wrote, according to the post. “I wouldn’t want any other family to go through what he did.”