Vaccinated senior dies when COVID hits his hockey league after the first game for 18 months

A fully vaccinated Ontario retiree has died since the spread of COVID-19 in his adult hockey league.

Last week, 75-year-old Garry Weston died after suffering a severe stroke while fighting COVID-19 pneumonia, according to his family.

Weston’s daughter Amber Weston-Campbell told CTV News Toronto on Thursday that her father became infected with COVID-19 in September while playing in a three- to three-hockey league in Newmarket, Ontario, for the first time in 18 months. According to the Ontario York Region authorities, the hockey league was involved in 15 COVID-19 breakthroughs.

“My dad was an avid athlete,” Weston-Campbell told CTV on Thursday. “He’s been waiting to go back to playing because he just loved hockey.”

Weston-Campbell said his father didn’t feel very good the next day after playing.

“It was like a cold, but it gradually got worse at home,” he said. “He had trouble breathing.”

When Weston was hospitalized, he worsened further before being transferred to intensive care and eventually intubated.

“When they intubated him, he developed signs and symptoms of stroke,” said Weston-Campbell, a registered nurse. “They then noticed that he had a massive stroke. The doctor told us he couldn’t come home. It was a grim diagnosis.”

Doctors told Weston-Campbell that the damage caused by Weston’s stroke was irreparable and he would have no “quality of life” if he were deprived of alimony.

Weston-Campbell and his family decided to take his father out of alimony soon after.

“It would have been so unfair of us to try to preserve his physical body for what it would have been like he had hated every minute. He was way too active a guy to live that way.” said Weston-Campbell.

He concluded his statement to CTV by mentioning that his family still believes that everyone should still get the vaccine.

“We just want people to be vigilant,” he said. “It’s a very small number of people, but you never know when that number will be you.”

According to CTV, the other 14 who tested positive in the hockey league had mild symptoms.

Newsweek has contacted the official website of the York area for further comments.