Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • We just had our third death this morning.

  • This protective gear that you see has to be warned for the entire day.

  • We want to get one for the entire day as the novel Corona virus plows its destructive path Doctors and nurses leading the battle but often feeling unarmed.

  • I have nurses that call me on a daily basis to tell me that they're scared.

  • Tell me they don't know what to d'oh.

  • We didn't sign up to cause harm at this point, we know that we're the ones that are gonna take it into the community without the proper tonight their voices A chorus of concern that the very people on the front lines are in danger.

  • How many of my co workers have to become severely ill and risk dying before the government really takes notice and gets us the proper peopie?

  • We need the growing toll both physical and emotional, rising among their ranks.

  • A well known neurosurgeon.

  • And I see you nurse in Miami Among the casualties, all the meat that you see, they all have proven this is only one of several rooms.

  • Some say for Kobe, 19 in the U.

  • S.

  • This is Ground zero situation right now is overwhelming.

  • Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, New York Seeing as many as a dozen deaths in a 24 hour period from the virus, primary care physicians like Dr Lucy Harris are working to ease the crush of patients on hospitals like Elmhurst.

  • We have a big role because we take care of the patients that are not real.

  • Then the your doctors will have more time to take care of the sickest one.

  • Rs and her husband, Dr Carlos Gonzalez, met in medical school in Puerto Rico.

  • They've served this queen's immigrant community for decades in their private practice.

  • How dangerous is this virus for health care workers?

  • Is terribly dangerous.

  • I had a stuff meeting with my dream medical assistance and you stop.

  • It broke my heart.

  • I tried toe toe, have a contingency plan off.

  • I reschedule seniors.

  • I check the temperature on the entrance of the office.

  • I saw two patients that were Neil, and I felt like I had no no defense on, I said, You know, this is not working.

  • I don't have the gear to protect my stuff for myself.

  • What started as a steady stream of cases in early March became a wave of sick patients crusting over this dense, working class corner of Queens.

  • Many of them leap in a public transportation.

  • Andi, I think it's my theory that because they use the subway and the bosses, you could never find an empty sidewalk is very crowded on.

  • These virus is so contagious, and in this case you feel defenseless.

  • In many ways, it's like fighting a monster with a water gun.

  • Dr.

  • Aris believes that her husband's job, which included checking patients for strep throat, put him at risk and may have exposed him to the virus.

  • And as a former E R doctor, what made your husband finally say I'm going to the E.

  • R?

  • He told me, I don't feel right on the breathing, right?

  • It's been 10 days since Dr Gonzalez tested positive for Cove in 19.

  • His wife had to leave him at the door of a Long Island hospital on the eve of what would have been a doubly special day.

  • The couple's 38th anniversary and Dr Gonzalez is 66th birthday.

  • How are you doing?

  • Both physically and emotionally.

  • I think physically I'm fine.

  • I think emotionally I'm trying to be strong, and yet you've joined the ranks of the patient population, unable to visit your loved one in the hospital.

  • I always go so hard.

  • I think that was that was the heart.

  • But I say we're like we've been together for so many years.

  • So hi.

  • With word of her husband's now stable condition, Dr Aris is focusing on her patients, right?

  • Call teleconferencing, day and night.

  • So if it was astonishing to me, is your husband's in the hospital fighting for his life and you're seeing 100 patients a day.

  • It's really a calling.

  • You have to the self plays in Puerto Rico.

  • We have a saying that once you sign up to be a soldier, you have to march for us.

  • As registered nurses were compelled to help and to heal.

  • Bonnie Castillo is the executive director of National Nurses United.

  • She says the lack of personal protective equipment is forcing medical professionals to make choices.

  • They should never have to make decisions, a CZ to whether they can work in conditions where they themselves could be calm vectors in the spread of this virus and actually cause harm instead of healing.

  • Mike Michael Cora.

  • Dockets has been an icy you nurse for 25 years.

  • But these past few weeks, he says, have left emotional scars.

  • I used to joke that you could only get PTSD if you have feelings.

  • Um, even the most hardened practitioner, you know, everybody cries it work.

  • It's just part of it now.

  • What triggers the tears?

  • People die alone now, and that's unusual.

  • I had a 35 year old patient die, you know, on me the other day with nothing significant is a medical history.

  • This is a horrible, horrible disease.

  • And so tell me about that patient.

  • He was my only patient for the first part of the 12 hour shift, Um, because he coded a couple of times during the day coded, meaning his heart had stopped.

  • Right phone ring.

  • It was his wife, and she said, Can we face time with him?

  • And I said, Absolutely.

  • So I straighten up the room.

  • I made sure that he looked nice for the call when, um, monitor started alarming.

  • I looked up in this.

  • Heartbreak was dropping, his blood pressure is dropping, and within just a minute or two he was almost gone.

  • So I just stopped what I was doing.

  • Like, I went with him, and, uh, I talkto I said that his wife was thinking about him, that I just spoken to her, you know, that his family loved him and missed him.

  • I'm just trying to say the things that I thought I might want to hear.

  • If it was May, I just called her and let her know that he had passed away.

  • And, um, she still wanted a face time with him.

  • And then she handed the phone around and came into their stun 10 or 12 year old boy, And, um, it was hard.

  • He just said, Just a poppy.

  • Poppy, please don't leave me alone in this world, You know, that was it hung up the phone and then didn't radio got him ready.

  • And then I got two more patients from the e.

  • R.

  • So bed stone stay empty for very long.

  • With this, it feels like combat, you know, I guess walking into combat, at least you know where the firing is coming from.

  • And you can shoot back way.

  • Walk into this without any weapons, you know, and you don't know where the enemy is.

  • Yeah.

  • Luckily in this hospital, we have way start pretty good peopIe personal protective equipment.

  • So I have not once gone without an N 95.

  • But there are hospitals around the country that have run out.

  • But the truth is, once your doctors and nurses die, you don't stand a chance.

  • If we die, you die.

  • And that is the truth.

  • Hi, everyone.

  • George Stephanopoulos here.

  • Thanks for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel.

  • If you'd like to get more video show highlights and watch live event coverage, click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel.

  • And don't forget to download the ABC News after breaking news alerts.

  • Thanks for watching.

We just had our third death this morning.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it