Coronavirus: A Nurse Who Used Garbage Bags As A Gown Dies

Lack of equipment to provide care to patients has led medical staff to improvise and in some cases use garbage bags for protection. One of the nurses at a New York hospital died Tuesday after contracting coronavirus.

In the photo that circulated on social media as hotcakes, three nurses are in the hallways of Mount Sinai Hospital using black plastic garbage bags made from improvised protective gear due to lack of equipment.

Kious Kelly, 48, was a nursing assistant at the aforementioned New York City medical center and was infected with COVID-19 for approximately two weeks after being in intensive care, the New York Post reported.

Although the particular circumstances of how Kelly was infected are unknown, his co-workers linked the death to the shortage of material that the hospital suffers from, the newspaper added.

"Kious didn't deserve it," one of the workers anonymously told the Post. "You must hold the hospital accountable. The hospital killed him."

Those sources indicated that they ran out of the necessary protective suits to prevent contagion and had to resort to the garbage bags. A hospital spokesperson denied there was a lack of equipment, the Post added.

Marya Sherron, Kelly's little sister, confirmed that while her brother had asthma, he was a healthy man. He said he had informed her that he had the coronavirus 10 days before he died and that intensive care doctors thought it would evolve positively, according to the Post.

"We are deeply saddened by the death of a beloved member of our nursing staff," said Renatt Brodsky, a representative of the Mount Sinai Health System, according to Business Insider.

Mount Sinai said on Twitter that in the face of difficult health conditions and the crisis that is depleting the resources of hospitals in New York, they are doing "everything humanly possible" to protect staff and patients.

In the United States, the number of COVID-19 cases reaches 79,698, of which 37,258 are registered in New York City, the epicenter of the outbreak in the country.