Shiloh
Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/s...ed-amid-covid-omicron-delta-surge/9000400002/
Iowan dies after a 15-day wait for a medical center bed. His survivors blame the COVID surge
Tony Leys
Des Moines Register
Dec. 26, 2021
Dale Weeks’ family believes he was an indirect victim of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The retired Iowa school superintendent died in late November, nearly a month after he was diagnosed with sepsis, a dangerous, blood-borne infection unrelated to the coronavirus.
His daughters think he might have survived if he’d been admitted immediately to a large medical center, where he could have received advanced testing and prompt surgery.
But he stayed for 15 days at Newton’s relatively small hospital because the bigger facilities said they couldn’t spare a bed for him, his family says. Iowa’s short-staffed hospitals have been jammed for months with patients, including people severely sickened by COVID-19.
“It’s infuriating that people who are not vaccinated are clogging it up,” said Jenifer Owenson of Des Moines, who is one of Weeks’ four children.
Weeks lived in the southern Iowa town of Seymour. When he began feeling ill, he thought it might be a side effect of a flu shot and a booster shot of coronavirus vaccine. On the night of Nov. 1, he went to the hospital in nearby Centerville, where staff determined he had sepsis. “They told my dad and his wife right away they had no beds,” Owenson said....
Iowan dies after a 15-day wait for a medical center bed. His survivors blame the COVID surge
Tony Leys
Des Moines Register
Dec. 26, 2021
Dale Weeks’ family believes he was an indirect victim of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The retired Iowa school superintendent died in late November, nearly a month after he was diagnosed with sepsis, a dangerous, blood-borne infection unrelated to the coronavirus.
His daughters think he might have survived if he’d been admitted immediately to a large medical center, where he could have received advanced testing and prompt surgery.
But he stayed for 15 days at Newton’s relatively small hospital because the bigger facilities said they couldn’t spare a bed for him, his family says. Iowa’s short-staffed hospitals have been jammed for months with patients, including people severely sickened by COVID-19.
“It’s infuriating that people who are not vaccinated are clogging it up,” said Jenifer Owenson of Des Moines, who is one of Weeks’ four children.
Weeks lived in the southern Iowa town of Seymour. When he began feeling ill, he thought it might be a side effect of a flu shot and a booster shot of coronavirus vaccine. On the night of Nov. 1, he went to the hospital in nearby Centerville, where staff determined he had sepsis. “They told my dad and his wife right away they had no beds,” Owenson said....