Family says Iowa man’s death caused by unvaccinated after 15-day wait for transfer

The family of an Iowa man who died of a non-COVID-19 related infection last month says the man’s death was indirectly caused by the pandemic. 

Dale Weeks died from an infection in late November after he spent 15 days in a small hospital when larger facilities in the state could not accommodate him because they were overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, according to The Des Moines Register. 

“It’s infuriating that people who are not vaccinated are clogging it up,” Jenifer Owenson, one of Weeks’s four children, said, according to the Register.

Weeks was admitted to a small hospital in the MercyOne health care system when larger facilities in the area were unable to provide him with a bed to treat his sepsis infection, the Register reported. Owenson said that though the staff at MercyOne did the best they could, Weeks’s infection worsened and the family repeatedly requested that he be transferred to a more advanced facility.

“We kept being told he was on a ‘list of degrees of severity,’ and his number had not come up,” she said.

“In addition to an increased number of COVID-19 cases and spread of the delta and omicron variants, hospitals across the country are dealing with traumas and experiencing multiple types of illness,” MercyOne spokesperson Marcy Peterson said in an email to the Register.

“This demand is coupled with a reduced number of staff to care for patients. These challenges can strain available resources and contribute to delays in care or other complications for patients,” she added.

After 15 days, Weeks was transferred to another hospital. There, he underwent surgery, but continued to struggle and eventually died, according to the Register.

While hospitals have been overwhelmed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, some early studies have indicated that the omicron variant may be more mild and lead to hospitalization less often than the delta variant.