Elma Cavalida – a Maternity Assistant at Northwick Park Hospital, Harrow. London, England – passed away on 26 April, 2020, after suffering from COVID-19. Elma was 49 years old.
Her death comes amid suggestions that those from ethnic minority backgrounds should be moved away from the front line to non-patient facing roles, as UK data shows they are ‘disproportionately affected by Covid-19’.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer in mid-February and told that her condition was ‘curable’, but she would have to go through at least a year-and-a-half of treatment. The maternity assistant decided to continue working at the hospital until her chemotherapy started in late-March, but took every precaution possible, even buying her own stash of PPE equipment. After her last day of work in late March, she came home with a fever and told her husband that some of her colleagues had similar symptoms but she doubted it was coronavirus.
On April 1, Elma came down with a high temperature and was told to come straight to Barnet General Hospital, where she was diagnosed with Covid-19. Her condition had dramatically worsened by April 8 and she was put in the ICU on a ventilator.
Source: Metro