COVID-19: Top New York Doctor Takes Her Own Life

A top emergency room doctor in New York battling on the front lines of the US fight against the COVID-19 pandemic took her own life on Sunday.

Dr Lorna Breen, who was medical director of the emergency department at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital in Manhattan, died of self-inflicted injuries on Sunday, police said.

Her father, Dr. Philip C. Breen told the New York Times that “his daughter had contracted the virus but had returned to work after recuperating for about a week and a half". The hospital sent her home again, before her family intervened to bring her to Charlottesville, he said.

Dr. Lorna M. Breen, a top emergency room doctor at a Manhattan hospital that treated coronavirus patients, died by suicide on Sunday, according to her father, Dr. Philip C. Breen. “She tried to do her job," he said, "and it killed her." https://t.co/9eOiEMdkrV

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 27, 2020

He added: "She tried to do her job, and it killed her. She was truly in the trenches of the front line. Make sure she’s praised as a hero, because she was. She’s a casualty just as much as anyone else who has died.”

New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital said in a statement: "Dr Breen is a hero who brought the highest ideals of medicine to the challenging front lines of the emergency department."

”Frontline healthcare professionals and first responders are not immune to the mental or physical effects of the current pandemic," said the Charlottesville Police Department in a press release. "On a daily basis, these professionals operate under the most stressful of circumstances, and the Coronavirus has introduced additional stressors".

New York has reported almost a third of nearly one million US COVID-19 cases.