“I’ve never lost a patient from this diagnosis, ever,” Dr. Hasan Kakli said.
A veteran of the Afghanistan War died of a treatable illness last week due to a lack of intensive care unit (ICU) beds amid the ongoing surge in COVID-19 infections across the country. Daniel Wilkinson, a Texas resident who served two deployments in Afghanistan, began feeling ill last Saturday and was taken to the Bellville Medical Center in Bellville, Texas, by his mother Michelle Puget. The 46-year-old veteran was diagnosed with gallstone pancreatitis and told he needed an ICU bed. But due to the high-number of COVID-19 hospitalizations amid the surge of the Delta variant, doctors struggled to find one available in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas and Colorado. “The doctor was trying to find him an ICU bed,” Puget told Houston’s NBC News affiliate KPRC2. “He said ‘we have been refused so far.’ He said ‘we have called Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas and Colorado.'” Dr. Hasan Kakli, the Bellville emergency room physician who diagnosed Wilkinson, told CBS News that the operation the veteran needed would have taken about 30 minutes.
