‘Distraught’ New York ER doctor takes own life

● Medic described patients dying before they could even be removed from ambulances

A leading doctor working in New York, the worst-hit city for coronavirus in the US, took her own life after witnessing patients dying on the “front line” of her hospital’s emergency room.

Dr Lorna Breen, the medical director of the emergency department at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital in

Manhattan, had described to her father in the days before her death the toll her work had taken on her and her colleagues.

According to her father, Dr Philip Breen, the 49-year-old had not suffered from mental illness, and had sounded distraught when she talked about seeing patients dying before they could even be taken out of ambulances.

She had also contracted Covid-19 and took some time off work to recover before returning. The hospital sent her home again, and her family brought her to their house in Virginia.

“She was truly in the trenches of the front line,” he told The New York Times.

“She tried to do her job, and it killed her.

“Make sure she’s praised as a hero, because she was. She’ sa casualty just as much as anyone else who has died.”

A spokesperson for the Charlottesville police department said: “The victim was taken to hospital for treatment, but later succumbed to self-inflicted injuries.”

In a statement, New York-Presbyterian agreed Breen was a “hero who brought the highest ideals of medicine to the challenging front lines” of the emergency department.

“Our focus today is to provide support to her family, friends and colleagues as they cope with this news during what is already an extraordinarily difficult time.”

The 200-bed hospital had at times had as many as 170 patients with Covid-19.

As of April 7, there had been 59 patient deaths at the hospital, according to an internal document. New York has the highest death toll of any city in the world.

The US has recorded the highest number of cases — nearly one-million — and more than 58,000 deaths.

New York state has seen nearly a third of all American deaths and has been overwhelmed in recent weeks with the growing number of casualties flooding its hospitals and morgues.

Mental health groups have warned that post-traumatic stress from the pandemic is becoming a crisis.

Two days before Breen took her own her life, a paramedic from the Bronx shot himself and died.

“Those most at risk are the front-line healthcare workers,” the head of Stanford University’s International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies said.

Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor, said he wished he had “blown the bugle” about Covid-19 earlier.

“When we heard in December that China had a virus problem and China said basically, ‘It is under control, don’t worry’, we should have worried”, he told US news website Axios.