After hours waiting for Miami hospital bed, cruise passenger’s family calls 911. It was too late
UPDATE, 11 a.m. Sunday: Wilson Maa, 71, passed away Saturday night at Larkin Community Hospital in Hialeah from complications associated with COVID-19. The family’s statement is included at the bottom of this story.
After waiting four hours for a desperately needed hospital bed and ventilator, family members of a COVID-19 patient onboard the Coral Princess called 911, rather than continuing to wait on the cruise line to get their loved one to safety.
Wilson Maa, 71, needed help — fast. A few hours after five other people onboard the cruise ship docked in Port Miami were hospitalized, Maa became much sicker.
His oxygen level dropped perilously low around 5 p.m., forcing ship medical staff to put him on a manual ventilator, the kind someone hand pumps to keep a patient’s lungs breathing. He needed a mechanical ventilator immediately to keep him alive.
But the ship’s doctor told Maa’s family there were no hospital beds available and ambulances were on “lockdown,” even as a private ambulance company that ferried away the sick earlier in the week stood at the ready.
Data from Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration show that while his family waited for Maa to be evacuated from the ship, the same hospital that took two Coral Princess patients earlier in the day, Larkin Community Hospital, had 11 adult ICU beds available between the two campuses.
The same data show there are more than 150 adult ICU beds available at hospitals throughout Miami-Dade County as of 7:30 p.m.
“Doctor insisted that public and private hospital beds with a ventilator are not available,” said Maa’s son-in-law, Jason Chien. “He also says the ship is running low on oxygen but are not able to get a resupply due to the governor or Miami area having a ‘lockdown’ on ambulances or something like that.”
Under Miami-Dade County’s lockdown order, private ambulances are considered an essential business.
An executive with Miami-Dade Ambulance, a private ambulance company that has done work in PortMiami this week, said the company is still open for business and taking calls, as are other private-ambulance providers.
Representatives from Princess Cruises, which owns the ship, Carnival Corp., which owns Princess Cruises, or Miami-Dade County did not respond to requests for comment on why Maa was unable to access a hospital bed for four hours.
“We are either hitting dead ends or getting the runaround from all the people we have been calling, “ Chien said. “We don’t know who is calling the shots and making the decisions on triage and medical resource usage.”
An ambulance finally picked up Maa from the ship around 10 p.m. and took him to Larkin Community Hospital’s Hialeah campus.
Maa started getting sick last Saturday aboard the Coral Princess. His wife, Toyling Maa, soon followed. A test confirmed Wilson had COVID-19, but Chien said he was doing fine until Saturday evening’s turn for the worse.
Two Coral Princess passengers died Friday night. The ship docked in Port Miami on Saturday morning and evacuated the five most sick to Larkin Community Hospital in Miami-Dade and St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa.
Maa died hours after reaching the hospital. His wife is still aboard the Coral Princess under medical supervision.
“We are beyond heartbroken and we will miss our father dearly. He was the best husband, father and gong gong,” his family wrote in a statement. “We are so lucky to have a father that was so silly, fun, engineering minded and thoughtful. There are no words for the sorrow we have experienced but only joy for the memories we had with him.”
Miami Herald Reporter Douglas Hanks contributed to this story.
