Doctor, 28, who died from COVID-19 wore same mask for ‘weeks if not months’

 A 28-year-old doctor who died fighting COVID-19 had been wearing the same mask at the Houston hospital where she worked for “weeks if not months” when she became infected with the illness, her family said.

Dr. Adeline Fagan, who was from Syracuse, started experiencing symptoms while doing a rotation in July treating coronavirus patients at HCA Houston Healthcare West, the Guardian reported.

It’s unclear how she became infected, but her family believes that her alleged lack of proper PPE likely played a role.

“Adeline had an N95 mask and had her name written on it,” her sister, Maureen Fagan, told the outlet.

“Adeline wore the same N95 for weeks and weeks, if not months and months.”

Adeline, who was a second-year OB-GYN resident, quarantined at home after testing positive for the virus, but her sister urged her to go to the hospital when she noticed her lips had turned blue.

For two weeks, the hospital attempted to treat her failing lungs with supplemental oxygen, the outlet reported.

But she was ultimately transferred to another hospital, where she was placed on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine, or ECMO.

Her family said she appeared to show improvement, but then they received the news last month that she had suffered a massive brain bleed and required emergency surgery.

“The doctor said they have seen this type of event in COVID patients that spend time on ECMO,” her family wrote on a GoFundMe page.

They said they were told there was a “1 in a million” chance of her making it through the procedure, which could result in severe cognitive and sensory problems if she survived.

“We spent the remaining minutes hugging, comforting, and talking to Adeline,” the family wrote. “And then the world stopped.”

A spokesperson for the hospital where she worked said colleagues were “heartbroken” by the doctor’s death.

But the facility’s chief medical officer, Dr. Emily Sedgwick, denied allegations that staffers are required to constantly reuse their PPE.

“Our protocol, based on CDC guidance, includes colleagues turning in their N95 masks at the conclusion of each shift, and receiving another mask at the beginning of their next shift,” she told the Guardian.

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