Job

NYC Nurse Says He’s Not Scared: ‘I Am Only Doing My Job’ For COVID-19 Patients

By Sandra R. Nicholson 1 month ago

Before the deadly coronavirus hit New York, Francisco Díaz’s job as a gerontological nurse practitioner was educating seniors on managing their diabetes. Now, he’s at the heart of the pandemic, working in a New York City emergency room.

“I have worked during the influenza outbreaks, the swine flu, but never a public health threat of this dimension,” said Díaz. April 8 was “one of the hardest days” at his hospital, Mount Sinai West, he told KHN. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced nearly 800 people in the state died that day from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Francisco Díaz, a gerontological nurse practitioner, is working in the emergency department at Mount Sinai West hospital in New York City during the coronavirus crisis and says his fluency in Spanish comes in handy for Hispanic patients and their worried families. It is, he says, “very important to offer them information about

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Young People Weigh Pain Of Job Loss Against Risks Of Virus

By Sandra R. Nicholson 2 months ago

Emilio Romero, 23, has mixed feelings about losing his job. It’s a major financial setback, but with two previous hospitalizations for pneumonia, a restaurant was not the safest place for the recent college graduate as the COVID-19 pandemic mushroomed.

“Working in a restaurant, there’s obviously exposure to a lot of people and dirty plates,” Romero said. “Even before I was officially laid off, I was getting pretty nervous about the way everything was playing out, for my own safety.”

Romero worked his last shift as a restaurant host in San Diego’s Little Italy on March 16, the same day San Diego County officials ordered all restaurants to switch to takeout and delivery only. Since then, COVID-19 cases in California have increased by more than 22 times, from 598 to 13,438 as of April 4. If

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