A mother in Utah had a heart attack. The life-saving medical care she needed was lacking because of Covid-19.news

Before the dawn of a recent Tuesday morning at a hospital in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, Laurie Terry’s doctor made a disturbing discovery: the outbreak of Covid-19, Utah’s record setting, is known to many. It became more dangerous than it was.

The virus could kill a patient (his patient) even if he was not infected.

A few hours ago, a 47-year-old mother and wife, Terry, had a heart attack at her home in Herriman, Utah. According to her sister, she had to be resuscitated four times by ambulance on her way to the nearest hospital.

Upon arriving there, medical staff and her doctor quickly determined that Terry could die without the more sophisticated life-saving treatment found in the intensive care unit of a larger hospital.

Terry’s sister, Stephanie Deer, said, “He (the doctor) immediately told us. We’re doing everything we can to find a hospital that can accept Raleigh, but to find out. I can’t do it. “

“If you saw the doctor’s face, he was incredible. I couldn’t believe he was telling us this.”

The deer and sister are not alone.

Utah Governor Gary Herbert said Tuesday that the state was experiencing “one of the worst (coronavirus) outbreaks in the country.”

As a result, patients suffering from other life-threatening medical events (not related to Covid) are at risk of competition for limited specialty care.

Utah is in the midst of the worst of new Covid-19 cases since the pandemic began. According to the Covid Tracking Project, the state is one of the 14 that reported peak hospitalizations with Covid-19 in the past week.

According to Herbert, the total use of ICU in the state is almost 70%, and almost 16% of ICU beds in the state are used to treat Covid-19 patients.

On Friday, the University of Utah Hospital ICU had a capacity of 104%.

Covid surge that caused damage to Utah doctors

Among the doctors helping treat Covid patients in Utah, Dr. Emily Spibak is frustrated and upset by the surge in cases. Because she knows this shouldn’t happen. Coronavirus can be prevented by washing hands, social distance, and wearing a mask.

She reached the limit in a parking lot outside a Level 1 trauma center working in Salt Lake City.

“Well, I was working hard not to do that,” she said in tears. “To be honest, this is very frustrating.”

Spivak said he saw many people no longer following the guidelines of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and believed they were just complacent.

“I can’t see the end. No one is doing anything to stop what’s happening,” she said. “It’s like people are out and living unaware that they’re running out of our health care system.”

The deer said he witnessed the doctor’s frustration directly.

“I saw those nurses calling for hours, trying out other systems and doing everything they could. I’m desperate,” she said.

“Your life, your entire profession is dedicated to saving people’s lives and you don’t know how doctors, nurses and things can maintain this when you don’t have access to patient care. . “

And she shares the frustration of medical professionals.

She and her sister carefully followed all Covid precautions, Deer said. Still, her sister can die as a result of the virus anyway.

She is angry with people who ignore science.

“They don’t understand how volatile their lives and the lives of all their loved ones … this can happen to anyone,” Deer said. “They need to wear masks,” Deer said. “They need to care about their neighbors, their families and their children, and now they need to do it.”

Eventually, Terry was able to be taken to the hospital with the opening and the professional care she needed. But the deer said her condition had deteriorated.

CNN’s Teresa Waldrop contributed to this report.