A top doctor who was on the front line in the United States’ fight against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has taken her own life.
Dr Lorna Breen, who was medical director of the emergency department at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital in Manhattan, died of self-inflicted injuries on Sunday, police said.
The father of the deceased, Dr Philip Breen, said his daughter seemed to have been overwhelmed by the impact the pandemic is having on individuals and hospitals in New York.
Lorna Breen herself had fallen ill with the coronavirus during the course of her work and returned to the job after about a week-and-a-half of recuperating, said her father.
The hospital had sent her home again, before her family “intervened” to bring her to Charlottesville, said her father.
He said that when they last spoke, his daughter had seemed “detached” and told him how Covid-19 patients were dying before they could even be removed from ambulances. Dozens of patients have succumbed to coronavirus at the 200-bed hospital in Manhattan.
“She tried to do her job and it killed her.
“She was truly in the trenches on the front line.
“Make sure she’s praised as a hero. She’s a casualty just as much as anyone else who has died,” Breen’s father told the New York Times.
The New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital said in a statement described the late doctor as a hero.
“Dr Breen is a hero who brought the highest ideals of medicine to the challenging front lines of the emergency department,” the statement read.
Confirming her death, the Charlottesville Police Department in a statement also described Dr Breen as a “hero”.
The police department said that after a call for help on 26 April, Dr Breen was taken to a local hospital for treatment “where she later succumbed to self-inflicted injuries”.
New York accounts for 17,500 out of America’s coronavirus 56,000 deaths.
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