Too many corona patients: man dies after being turned away from 43 hospitals

A current case from the USA shows how dangerous rising corona numbers can also be for emergency care in hospitals.

A man died because no hospital could admit him.

Montgomery - If hospitals have to turn patients down because they run out of free ICU beds, it can have serious consequences for the healthcare system.

While this condition could largely be avoided in this country, the situation in the hospitals of some US states seems to be getting more and more precarious.

In the US state of Alabama, a patient died earlier this month after being unable to admit him to any of the 43 surrounding hospitals.

The deceased man was 73-year-old Ray DeMonia.

After a heart attack, he was admitted to the emergency room of the hospital in his hometown, which, however, wanted to move him to another hospital due to a lack of treatment options.

But: none of the 43 hospitals contacted in three different states were able to accept the patient.

Most of the intensive care beds were occupied by unvaccinated patients suffering from Covid-19.

Drama in the USA: man dies after being turned away from several hospitals

A hospital in Meridian, Mississippi, some 300 kilometers from his hometown, was finally able to accept DeMonia, but the patient died a short time later of the effects of his heart attack. The family is in shock: "We never thought this would happen to us," said his daughter Raven DeMonia in an interview with the

If more people had been vaccinated, DeMonia might still be alive now, she added. Now his family has made an urgent appeal to the public in his obituary: "Please get vaccinated if you have not already done so to provide capacity for non-Covid-19 emergencies." DeMonia would do not want another family to experience a tragedy like his, the family said.

In fact, the numbers in the USA are rising sharply again, while the country is stalling with its vaccination progress: With around 380 million vaccinations, the USA is behind China, India and Europe.

So far, 53.22 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated, 62.35 percent have received at least the first vaccination.

But the vaccination progress is not fast enough in view of the rapidly increasing numbers in the country - the incidence across all states is 360.4 (as of September 14, 2021).

"Pandemic of the Unvaccinated": Critical intensive care beds in some US states

In the USA, too, there has been talk of a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” for a long time. In Alabama in particular, the hospitals are sometimes excessively overloaded. Above all, the increase in unvaccinated intensive care patients is causing a shortage of hospital beds. This makes it particularly difficult to move patients to other hospitals for special treatments, as does Dr. Don Williamson, president of the Alabama Hospital Association, confirmed to the AP. "Every day hospitals try to move patients for treatment, it's very difficult," added Williamson. "Some patients have already been transferred to other states such as Georgia, Kentucky or Florida".

According to him, half of the intensive care beds are occupied by Covid 19 patients.

Due to the rapid increase, space had to be created in some cases for additional intensive care beds, which meant that other patients had to be relocated.

As of Monday, 2474 Covid-19 patients are being treated in Alabama, 86 percent of whom are unvaccinated.

Around 63 percent of the inpatients treated with corona are in the intensive care unit.

The increase in the corona numbers is also clear across the country: More than three quarters of the intensive care beds are occupied.

Due to the enormous increase in corona numbers in recent weeks, the European Union declared the USA a high-risk area a long time ago and imposed entry restrictions.