Many hospitals are currently struggling to keep up with the number of patients who come to the emergency room and end up being admitted to the ICU. One reason for this is due to Covid. Many of the patients in the ICU are Covid patients, and they are taking beds that might be needed by people who are suffering from other life-threatening medical conditions. In addition, many hospitals are short-staffed. In some cases, this is due to Covid vaccine mandates.

The family of Ray Martin DeMonia wants to urge as many people as possible to get vaccinated for Covid-19. DeMonica suffered from cardiac arrest on September 1, 2021, but more than 40 hospitals turned him away, saying they didn’t have any room in the ICU. 

Finally, DeMonia was admitted to the Rush Foundation Hospital in Meridian, Mississippi, which is more than 200 miles from his home in Alabama. He died of a heart attack just three days before his 74th birthday.

Watch the video below for more about DeMonia’s story and what we can all do to help prevent a situation like this from happening again.

In DeMonia’s obituary, his family wrote, “In honor of Ray, please get vaccinated if you have not, in an effort to free up resources for non COVID related emergencies. Due to COVID 19, CRMC emergency staff contacted 43 hospitals in 3 states in search of a Cardiac ICU bed and finally located one in Meridian, MS. He would not want any other family to go through what his did.”

As mentioned in the video, besides getting vaccinated for Covid-19, it is also helpful to only visit the emergency room if it is a true emergency.

Does it surprise you that 43 hospitals turned a man away because they didn’t have enough room for him? Do you think he would have survived if he had been admitted to the hospital sooner? What do you think hospitals could do to ease their staffing issues?