Information reaching us at Checkout Magazine has it that an American doctor at the front line of the US fight against coronavirus has committed suicide.
It was learnt that 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.
The 49-year-old’s father, Dr Philip Breen, told the New York Times: “She tried to do her job and it killed her.”
New York accounts for 17,500 out of America’s coronavirus 56,000 deaths.
The elder Dr Breen said his daughter had had no history of mental illness. She died in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she had been staying with her family.
Lorna Breen herself had fallen ill with the coronavirus during the course of her work and reurned to the job after about a week-and-a-half of recuperating, said her father.
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.”
In a press release confirming her death, the Charlottesville Police Department also described Dr Breen as a “hero”.
New York state has recorded almost a third of the country’s nearly one million confirmed Covid-19 cases.
