'Terrified Of Dying Alone': Tearful Doctor Details COVID-19 Toll

Megan VerHelst
Updated ·7 min read

ACROSS AMERICA — The last time Dr. Shirlee Xie worked at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, she had five patients in her care. Through tears, she described them during a Tuesday interview with CNN.

One patient, a 41-year-old woman, was sent home and placed on hospice care. She was "terrified of dying alone," Xie said.

Her final two patients were a married couple in their 80s. They hadn't been apart in 62 years. While they were put in a room together, Xie said the husband could only lie there as his wife died in front of him.

"The wife got sicker and sicker and she died in the hospital, and her husband had to watch her die, and so he had to see that fear and that grief," Xie told CNN as she wiped away tears. "I don't think you can describe how that feels to us as their caretakers to have to see that kind of suffering from patients. ... This is, all of my colleagues are experiencing this at every hospital across Minnesota, and I think it's just really hard to comprehend that weight."

Over the last week, Minnesota has reported the fifth-highest number of new coronavirus cases per capita in the country, behind only the Dakotas, Wyoming and New Mexico, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The surge is pushing not only hospitals, but also hospital workers, to the brink. Xie also rejected the idea that health care workers are front-line workers.

"I can't prevent anyone from getting COVID, all I can do is try to keep COVID from killing you," she said. "So we are not the front lines. We are the last line of defense, and so what we need is for people to step up and to wear masks and to distance from people and just try to keep themselves safe and everybody else safe."

Watch Xie's interview in full here.

The Latest

After the United States on Tuesday marked its deadliest day of the pandemic since early May, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, issued a final plea ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Stay home this Thanksgiving, he said, or keep the gatherings small. Make the sacrifice to keep those you love healthy.

“We all know how difficult that is, because this is such a beautiful, traditional holiday,” Fauci told "Good Morning America" on Wednesday. "A sacrifice now could save lives and illness, and make the future much brighter as we get through this."

Fauci's comments come as the nation reported nearly 2,100 coronavirus-related deaths on Tuesday, marking the pandemic's deadliest day in more than six months.

Record numbers of fatalities were reported in nine states — Ohio, Washington, Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin, Oregon, Maine, Alaska and North Dakota — according to data tracked by The Washington Post.

Tuesday also marked 15 consecutive days of record hospitalizations. There were 88,080 hospitalizations reported Tuesday, according to Covid Tracking Project data. The United States is now averaging 83,296 hospitalizations over the last seven days.

As deaths and hospitalizations continue to set records, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering shortening the amount of time it recommends a person quarantine if exposed to the coronavirus.

The agency's reasoning is more psychological than scientific. It hopes that, by lowering the recommendation from 14 days, more Americans will comply with public health guidance intended to mitigate the virus's spread, the Washington Post reports.

The hope is that doing so will “help make quarantine less burdensome and will, as a result, hopefully increase compliance,” one official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, told the Post.

Meanwhile, ahead of some have dubbed "Blackout Wednesday," state leaders are ordering bars closed on Thanksgiving Eve in an attempt to curb the spread of coronavirus through pre-holiday gatherings held on what some say is one of the biggest drinking nights of the year.

In Pennsylvania, bars and restaurant have been ordered by the state to stop selling alcohol at 5 p.m. Wednesday.

In California, restaurant owner Greg Morena was trying to figure out his next step after county officials banned in-person dining for at least three weeks, beginning Wednesday. But he was mainly dreading having to notify his employees.

"To tell you, 'I can't employ you during the holidays' to staff that has family and kids, I haven't figured that part out yet. It's the heaviest weight that I carry," Morena, who had to close one restaurant earlier in the year and has two in operation at the Santa Monica Pier, told The Associated Press.

READ MORE: Restaurant Workers Unemployed Again As Coronavirus Surges Anew

Several other states have enacted new coronavirus restrictions in recent weeks, with 37 having mandated the wearing of masks or other face coverings while in public and when social distancing is not possible, according to an AARP report.

In Boise, Idaho's largest city and the state capital, not wearing one could result in an arrest.
A new order from Boise Mayor Lauren McLean instructs police to ticket or arrest people who refuse to wear masks or refuse to leave local businesses when asked, KATU-2 reported.

The order could also lead to a business losing its business license if staffers and customers refuse to wear masks and a "clear and immediate threat" is posed.

In other news, the U.S. government plans to send 6.4 million doses of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine to cities across the United States within 24 hours of regulatory clearance.

The expectation, according to a Washington Post report, is that shots will be administered to front-line health care workers. The first round of vaccines would cover about one-third of the nation's 20 million health care workers.

In the final hours before the holiday, the CDC is still urging Americans to avoid travel for the Thanksgiving holiday. "Airports, bus stations, train stations, public transport, gas stations and rest stops are all places travelers can be exposed to the virus in the air and on surfaces," CDC guidance states.

Still, millions of Americans are already on the move for the upcoming Thursday holiday.
About 1 million Americans a day packed airports and planes over the weekend, according to The Associated Press.

The number of people flying for Thanksgiving is down by more than half from last year because of the rapidly worsening surge, but the 3 million who went through U.S. airport checkpoints from Friday through Sunday marked the biggest crowds since mid-March, when the COVID-19 crisis took hold in the United States.

RELATED: Thanksgiving Travel 2020: Worst Times To Travel In U.S.

Signs warn travelers of COVID-19 in New York’s LaGuardia Airport in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Signs warn travelers of COVID-19 in New York’s LaGuardia Airport in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Wednesday's Latest Numbers

At least 2,092 new coronavirus deaths and 171,621 new cases were reported in the United States on Tuesday, according to a Washington Post database. Over the past seven days, the United States has seen an 8.9 percent increase in cases and averaged more than 172,800 cases each day.

As of Wednesday, 45 states and Puerto Rico remained above the positive testing rate recommended by the World Health Organization to safely reopen. To safely reopen, the WHO recommends states remain at 5 percent or lower for at least 14 days.

More than 12.6 million people in the United States had tested positive for the coronavirus as of Wednesday morning, and more than 260,300 have died, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Stay up to date on the latest coronavirus news via The New York Times or Washington Post.

Read More From Across America:

This article originally appeared on the Across America Patch