Coronavirus US: Nurse claims NYC is ‘killing’ patients with ventilators

Patients with COVID-19 at hospitals in New York City are hooked up to ventilators and “left to rot and die”, according to a nurse working on the frontline.

A nurse working on the frontline in New York City says medical staff are killing patients by putting them on ventilators, describing the situation as a "nightmare" and "horror movie" she doesn't want to be a part of.

A woman, identified only as Sara NP, said she was a nurse practitioner not on the front lines but was addressing the issue on behalf of her friend in New York City who is working there.

"For her safety she cannot come out and say these things so I am her voice," she said in the video, posted to Facebook, that she wanted to go "viral".

"I'm not going to name names of people or hospitals for the safety of those involved but this is her account."

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She identified only as Sara NP. Picture: Facebook

She read quotes from her friend. Picture: Facebook

Sara said her nurse friend had "used the word 'murder'" to describe the approach being taken by medical staff at some of the hospitals in NYC.

"People are sick but they don’t have to stay sick. They are killing them, they are not helping them," she said.

"Coming from a nurse who went to New York City expecting to help. Patients are left to rot and die – her words. She has never seen so much neglect. No one cares.

"They are cold and they don't care anymore. It's the blind leading the blind."

The nurse, according to Sara, said patients requiring more than six litres of nasal cannula – oxygen delivered through a tube in the nose – are intubated and either ventilated or given a tracheotomy.

She said other options, such as a CPAP or BiPAP, are bypassed for a “closed system” – the ventilator.

A ventilator control panel. Picture; Jack Guez/AFP

"The patients don't know any better. They don't have family with them ... so they are scared and they give consent,” Sara said.

She said the high pressure of the ventilators causes barotrauma or damage to the lungs.

Her friend described the situation as a "nightmare".

"It's out of a horror movie and I don't want to be a part of this," Sara recalled her saying.

"Sometimes they're not even resuscitating people."

Sara also noted Dr Cameron Kyle-Sidell, a Brooklyn emergency medicine physician, had warned that critically ill coronavirus patients were being inadvertently harmed by the breathing machines used to keep them alive.

"We are putting breathing tubes in people and putting them on ventilators and dialling up the pressure to open their lungs," Dr Kyle-Sidell said in a YouTube video on April 1.

"I have talked to doctors all around the country and it is becoming increasingly clear that the pressure we are providing may be hurting their lungs.

"That it is highly likely that the high pressures we are using are damaging the lungs of the patients we are putting the breathing tubes in."

Later that week, he told WebMD's Medscape he "had to step down" from his position in the intensive care unit and return to the ER due to an "impasse" on protocols.

A ventilator in use for a COVID-19 patient. Picture: John Moore/Getty Images/AFP

According to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, more than 58,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the US including more than 17,600 in New York City alone.

At 7pm every day, people take to their windows and balconies to clap and cheer for frontline health workers.

"We have nurses being celebrated as heroes who are killing people, they're not heroes, and they're being brainwashed to think they're doing something great because they're brave enough to go to work,” Sara said.

“But what are you doing at work? You're certainly not saving people ... you're not even going into patients rooms.

“You're a coward. You're contributing to the problem.

"I know I'm going to get hate mail for this and that's fine because people are dying who don't have to die."

Originally published as Coronavirus US: Nurse claims NYC is ‘killing’ patients with ventilators