‘Horrifying’ first days of COVID-19 pandemic in NYC relived in special episode of Netflix docuseries Lenox Hill
THE horrifying first days of coronavirus hitting New York City has been relived in a new episode of Lenox Hill, the Netflix series profiling doctors in one of Manhattan’s hospitals.
Three doctors are shown grappling with heart-wrenching decisions under impossible circumstances, as the virus was described as a “huge, silent tsunami”.
Lenox Hill follows the lives of four doctors in a New York Hospital over the course of 19 months.
The bonus episode, titled Pandemic, gives viewers a look at how the hospital’s staff dealt with the early onset of the virus.
Director Adi Barash spent 33 days filming the entire project alone, over the course of two months after Covid-19 hit New York City.
“It was like a huge, silent, invisible tsunami coming,” Barash, who started the cameras rolling on March 9, told Vulture.
“Not knowing what to expect, I had to conduct myself precisely. The first few days were horrifying because you just didn’t know what to do.”
He added: “You thought it was in the air. You thought it was in the droplets. You didn’t want to touch anything. You didn’t touch elevators. You were constantly putting on Purell or disinfecting and changing clothes. You did what everybody else was doing, but times 10.”
In the bonus episode, the emergency room is already desperately short on masks for its staff, and doctors are trying to keep abreast of the rapid developing situation.
On April 8, New York City’s deadliest day, there were 800 deaths within a 24 hour period.
On Thursday, New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced hospitalizations had dropped under 1,000 for the first time since March 18, but for months, New York City was the epicenter of the pandemic and hospitals were under extreme pressure.
In the Pandemic episode, this is strikingly evident.
One doctor, Mirtha Macri, who was pregnant throughout filming the series, admits she is only sleeping three hours a night, and has had to send her son and husband to live with her parents.
“That’s been a lot to deal with,” she says in the episode. “I haven’t seen them in two weeks and I probably won’t see them for another month.”
Neurosurgeon Dr Boockvar says at one point: “Reasonably everybody’s going to get infected.
“Well this country is under attack,” he adds. “So everyone’s trying to help out a little bit. I’m doing the critical trials for COVID, we’re trying to contribute in meaningful ways.”
In another excruciating scene, Dr Boockvar is confronted with a young patient who suffered a brain injury when he went into cardiac arrest from the coronavirus.
“We’ve been treating him for three weeks hoping that we can save him but his wife is here to let nature take its course,” he says.
“I don’t have good things to say,” a nurse off camera can be heard saying, asking the doctor: “Are you gonna..?”
Boockvar responds, “Yeah I’m going to end his life.”
Dr Boockvar is asked by the patient’s mother what he would do if it was his own son who had officially been deemed brain dead.
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Recalling the question later brings him to tears.
“It’s very painful, I can’t do this anymore,” he tells the camera.
The episode aired on Wednesday night.