Last week we reported on Dr. Joseph Costa, the chief of the critical care division/ICU at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, who died of complications from COVID-19 in his husbands arms. He was 56.
On AC360, Anderson Cooper got choked up speaking with Costa’s husband David Hart, about how he took off his PPE in his husband’s final moments.
ICYMI: Colleagues Shaken as ICU Chief at Baltimore Hospital Dies of COVID-19 in Husband’s Arms: WATCH
“So many people did not have the privilege that I had and I cannot imagine going through what I went through and not being able to be in the room,” said Hart. “I contracted COVID from Joe at the time he was dying. I was just not going to not be able to touch him with my bare hands, with my cheek, so I took everything off. I just took it off. I know I wasn’t supposed to do that, but, at that point, it was what I wanted to do for him to help support and comfort him.”
“Unfortunately, those 20 people that he worked with, his fellow physicians and nurses, they had to leave that room and go back to work, so they did not have that luxury,” Hart continued. “So they had their hands in blue gloves on his body which was a very poignant moment for him. So I was holding him and I looked down the length of his body and that’s what I saw.”
“I feel for them,” Hart added. “For everybody who has been in that situation, for everybody who has lost a loved one, it’s important to be there. It’s important to touch somebody. That’s what’s so cruel about this disease, the quarantining, the not being able to touch somebody, to give somebody a hug.”
