Coronavirus News: NYC doctor separated from 14-month-old son to fight COVID-19
MIDWOOD, Brooklyn (WABC) -- A doctor at Mount Sinai has saved people dying from COVID-19, but it has also cost her precious time with her 14-month-old baby.
No matter how much progress New York is making in reducing the curve, people are still dying. All the time.
If that truth wasn't hard enough, Dr. Angela Chen, of Mount Sinai Hospital, has also had to make the terrible sacrifice of spending the past seven weeks apart from her 14-month-old son, Theo, in order to fight the coronavirus.
Dr. Chen is an emergency medicine physician at Mount Sinai, but was recently deployed to Mount Sinai Brooklyn to help in the ICU.
She says that being away from her son has been really hard. Baby Theo hasn't hugged his mom in nearly four months.
"He raises his arms out he wants to be picked up, and there's no way to explain to a 14-month-old I can't pick you up, and it's crushing," Chen said.
This is the case in a state that's still following all the rules of social distancing.
But as the coronavirus has gone on a coast-to-coast rampage, 38 states are easing restrictions even though the virus is still surging in 19 of them.
"By putting a face to the everyday sacrifices that people are making because of the virus, people will think of the implications of those actions," Chen said.
Yet, in parts of the country people have started going on with their lives. With Mother's Day on Sunday, Dr. Chen wonders when she can go on with hers.
"What's the endpoint to this, when do we actually get to be with our children again?" Chen said.
Somewhere between 200 and 300 people are still dying every day in the state of New York, and they're dying in neighborhoods like South Brooklyn.
Mount Sinai Brooklyn has a total of three refrigerated trucks out back, and Dr. Chen sees no end in sight.
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