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Ray DeMonia, 73, from Cullman, Alabama
An Alabama man died of heart failure after being turned away from 43 hospitals in three southern states that were overrun with COVID patients.
Ray DeMonia, 73, was eventually admitted to a hospital in Meridian, Mississippi, 200 miles from his home in Cullman, Alabama, but was too ill to be saved and died on September 1.
DeMonia, who ran an antique business for 40 years, had suffered a heart incident just days before her birthday and needed a specialized cardiac intensive care bed.
Her family said staff at their local hospital contacted 43 hospitals in three states to request a free bed before eventually settling in Meridian, Mississippi, according to DeMonia’s obituary.
He died shortly after arriving at the Rush Foundation Hospital.
“In honor of Ray, please get the vaccine if you haven’t, in an effort to free up resources for non-COVID emergencies,” his obituary read.
DeMonia’s death came on the same day the United States reported 180,000 new cases of COVID, with a majority concentrated in the South.
COVID-19 hospitalizations peaked dramatically in August in Alabama and the rest of the United States
Alabama lags behind in immunization rates, with the state only recently reporting that about 50% of its eligible population has received at least one dose
The Alabama Department of Health recently reported that just over half of those eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine had received at least one vaccine.
This is well below the national average of 63.7% who have received at least one dose and 54% of Americans who are fully vaccinated.
During the week of DeMonia’s death, Alabama reported a shortage of intensive care hospital beds, more than half of them occupied by COVID-19 patients, CBS 42 reported.
The Alabama Hospital Association called the situation “catastrophic.”
“We’re definitely not going in the right direction,” AHA Deputy Director Danne Howard told CBS on the day DeMonia died.
“This is why we are trying so aggressively to find additional resources, so that these decisions do not have to be made, so these types of life and death situations should not be faced.”
Johns Hopkins University & Medicine found that intensive care beds in Alabama were at 103% of capacity that week, and the Montgomery Advertiser reported that unvaccinated patients continue to make up the majority of COVID-19 patients in the intensive care.
DeMonia’s family asked others to get vaccinated to avoid the situation they experienced. Pictured is a woman getting vaccinated in Altamonte Springs, Florida in August
Russell Griffin, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Alabama Birmingham who has studied patients hospitalized at University Hospital for COVID, said 61 of the 66 ICU patients for COVID were not vaccinated.
He added that about half of the vaccinated patients in intensive care units are there because they are immunocompromised from organ transplants or chemotherapy drugs.
In comparison, the unvaccinated population that ends up in intensive care typically lacks comorbidities or the presence of two or more medical conditions.
“There have been no deaths under the age of 65 in the UAB vaccinated population,” Griffin said.
As of Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 163,000 new cases in the United States and nearly 1,650 new deaths.
More than 75% of adults eligible for the vaccine in the United States have received at least one vaccine, according to the CDC.
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