When a patient is about to die, alone in an isolation room, hospital staff will arrange a video phone call for them to say goodbye to their loved ones.
Coming home after a 17-hour night shift, Tannis, 40, reviewed a conversation with a woman in the hospital room who couldn’t have seen her mother die minutes earlier in the next room.
`What can I tell my mother?` the daughter asked Tannis, but the nurse could not give advice.
`Normally, family members can be with the patient at the time of their death,` Tannis said.
Scheena Iyande Tannis in a New York hospital.
Similar tragedies rarely happened in New York City before, but now, with the Covid-19 outbreak, they happen every day, not only in Brookdale but also across hospitals in the city.
The number of nCoV infections in New York, the epicenter of the US Covid-19 epidemic, makes people speechless.
More than a month ago, the number of infections was just 0. The skyrocketing number of infected people has put pressure on the city’s health system, and this number is expected to rise for at least another week or two.
The Telegraph interviewed 10Â healthcare workers working on the Covid-19 frontline.
`People are dying, everywhere,` a patient caregiver said.
Most of the discontent is consistent, but the issue that has sparked frustration for US President Donald Trump is the lack of personal protective equipment such as masks, splash shields and gloves.
The shortage of N95 masks is mentioned again and again.
Protective gear is also lacking.
However, a nurse working there said the fear of lack of medical supplies is real.
Another concern also emerged.
Every hospital in New York is required to increase the number of beds by 50%.
However, the number of medical workers is not increasing, meaning they have to take on unfamiliar tasks, trying to cope with a pandemic that few people understand about.
`Things are really bad,` said a pediatric nurse at NYU medical center who was assigned to fight Covid-19.
Emergency calls to the 911 emergency line increased dramatically, more than 6,500 calls a day, three times more than usual, similar to the situation that occurred after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Covid-10 also increases the burden on emergency responders.
Hundreds of ambulances have been dispatched from elsewhere in the state to meet New York City’s needs, said Michael Greco, a paramedic who has worked in Queens for 13 years and is president of the union Local 2507.
Greco always remembers a case at Harlem hospital.
`In 13 years of working, I have never seen anything like this,` Greco said.
New York authorities have arranged 45 refrigerated trucks outside hospitals.
`We are doing our best to show respect for the deceased,` said Aja Worthy-Davis, city health director spokeswoman.
Medical staff transfer bodies from Wyckoff Heights Medical Center to a refrigerated truck in Brooklyn, New York, on April 2.
But for nurses taking care of patients, `it’s difficult for us to inform family members where the body is,` said a nurse.
Besides the long, hard working hours, the pressure of treating the sick, and the mental pain of witnessing so many deaths, another fear is weighing heavily on the shoulders of medical staff, which is the worry of death.
One employee at a New York hospital compared each shift to `going into battle without armor.`
Moreover, they are all worried about infecting their loved ones.
She wore a plastic sheet to drive home, then threw it away, took off her hospital uniform before entering the house, put it straight into the washing machine and immediately took a shower.
`I do everything carefully. One wrong step, I could infect everyone in the house and I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself,` she said.
What all New York doctors and nurses worry about the most is that the worst is yet to come.
He wants support for 3.3 million N95 masks, 100,000 protective suits, 400 ventilators, 1,000 nurses, 300 respiratory specialists and 150 other specialists.
`This is the naked truth, that without the above things, the New Yorkers we could have saved would all die,` he wrote in a letter to the US President.
For nurse Tannis, whose legs were swollen after a day of facing death and disease, it was hard to think of anything worse.
`I’m a person who doesn’t know how to express feelings,` she said.
`I beg everyone, please stay home,` she told New Yorkers and all Americans.