71-year-old man dies while waiting for his COVID-19 test in Utah

A nursing facility brought a patient to a COVID-19 testing site on Sunday in Utah. The health officials at the Utah healthcare system said that the patient was found dead upon arrival. Intermountain Healthcare released a statement about the incident. The statement said, “When the nursing facility’s van reached the drive-thru testing tent, their patient was unresponsive, cold to the touch, and likely deceased.”

The caregivers at the drive-thru testing site immediately called 911 to respond to the incident. The EMS workers could not revive the 71-year-old patient. The statement read, “Caregivers acted quickly and followed right procedures.” The testing volume at the COVID-19 testing site was also not high, according to the statement.

Erin Goff, a spokesperson of Intermountain Healthcare, said, “I was not sure how long the man was waiting for his COVID-19 test.” According to the officials, there was a long testing line on Monday. The parking site of the clinic was full and the cars were spilled out onto the streets. Neal Berube, the mayor of North Ogden, said that it was an alarming incident. Berube is also a member of the Intermountain Healthcare Board of Trustees.

Berube said that he was waiting for more information about the case. He did not talk on behalf of the hospital. He added, “The line is quite long, which I believe is the case at most testing facilities today.” Jeremiah Jones, the deputy chief of the North View Fire District, said, “The patient was discovered in cardiac respiratory arrest.”

Cardiac respiratory arrest is a situation in which an individual has no heartbeat and breath. The actual cause of death of the patient is still unclear. Jones said that their job was not to diagnose a patient. “Our job is to just treat the symptoms that we see and the signs that we see,” Jones added. Berube said that the conclusions could be made on the results of an autopsy. They should not blame anyone before getting results of the autopsy.