Teen first counted as coronavirus death was turned away at urgent care, CA mayor says

A California 17-year-old who may have died from coronavirus complications was turned away from urgent care because he wasn’t insured, an official says.

Earlier this week Los Angeles County health officials announced the teen’s death as the first person under 18 to die from coronavirus, according to McClatchy News. Hours later, officials backtracked and said the boy could have died from something else.

On Friday, the mayor of Lancaster, California, where the teen was from, said in a video statement that the boy was turned away from an urgent care facility because he didn’t have insurance.

The boy had been sick for several days and had no previous health conditions, Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris said.

“On the Friday before he died, he was healthy,” Parris said. “He was socializing with his friends. By Wednesday, he was dead.”

The urgent care the teen went to sent him to the hospital, Parris said. On the way there, the teen went into cardiac arrest.

The hospital was able to revive the teen, and he lived for about six more hours, Parris said.

“But by the time he got there, it was too late,” the mayor said. “We’ve learned that once you go into respiratory issues … and you have a fever, that is the time to get medical treatment without delay.”

The teen’s death was originally announced as the first person under 18 to die from coronavirus, but county health officials said Wednesday that they would no longer include his death in the tally of coronavirus deaths, according to McClatchy News.

“Though early tests indicated a positive result for COVID-19, the case is complex and there may be an alternate explanation for this fatality,” officials said in a Tuesday night statement.

Officials said they asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to evaluate the case.