Coronavirus News: Northwell Health employees lend voices to moving short film

Coronavirus Update for New York

Friday, November 20, 2020

Northwell Health employees lend voices to moving short film

Derick Waller has more on 20 Northwell Health employees who lent their voices to a moving short film.

NEW YORK (WABC) -- A musician has created a moving ode to healthcare workers on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the Spring, Artist Sen Sound asked 20 Northwell Health employees how they were feeling during the crisis and what they wanted others to know.

She then edited together their responses, a rendition of Amazing Grace, and images of New York during the lockdown to create a short film.

"And so, I'd want people to know that these patients still stay with us even after they passed away," Dr. Teresa Amato, Dr. Teresa Amato, Chair of Emergency Medicine at Long Island Jewish Forest Hills, said.

The project is called "Sounds of Caring: New York" and is dedicated to every healthcare and essential worker around the world.

"We've seen death in numbers too horrific to speak of as a profession we are scarred and hurting," Carolyn Germaine, the Director of Nursing at Mather Hospital, said.

"I think our voices really speak for all those frontline care workers, healthcare heroes," Dr. Amato said.

Dr. Joseph Marino, the Medical Director at Long Island Jewish Valley Stream, has recovered after contracting the coronavirus.

"I won't forget the date, on March 26, our emergency room had the capacity to seat 33 patients in beds. We had 80 patients in the emergency room with a line of ambulances outside," Dr. Marino said.

Germaine also got the virus and was placed on oxygen in her own hospital.

"While ill, our first grandchild was born and we have yet to hold him or even hug our own son," Germaine said. "I didn't even want to call for help when I was a patient because I didn't want to expose anybody to the virus."

Now with so much learned, these medical professionals say the threat still exists as the holiday season begins.

"And it is absolutely possible for it to happen again because as much as we learned is as much as we don't know," Dr. Marino said.

"We cannot do it alone that is for sure, we can do our part and we do need our non-healthcare workers, the community, to support us," Stanley John, respiratory therapist at North Shore University Hospital, said.