This protective gear that you see has to be warned for the entire day.

We want to get one for the entire day as the novel Corona virus plows its destructive path Doctors and nurses leading the battle but often feeling unarmed.

I have nurses that call me on a daily basis to tell me that they're scared.

Tell me they don't know what to d'oh.

We didn't sign up to cause harm at this point, we know that we're the ones that are gonna take it into the community without the proper tonight their voices A chorus of concern that the very people on the front lines are in danger.

How many of my co workers have to become severely ill and risk dying before the government really takes notice and gets us the proper peopie?

We need the growing toll both physical and emotional, rising among their ranks.

A well known neurosurgeon.

And I see you nurse in Miami Among the casualties, all the meat that you see, they all have proven this is only one of several rooms.

Some say for Kobe, 19 in the U.

S.

This is Ground zero situation right now is overwhelming.

Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, New York Seeing as many as a dozen deaths in a 24 hour period from the virus, primary care physicians like Dr Lucy Harris are working to ease the crush of patients on hospitals like Elmhurst.

We have a big role because we take care of the patients that are not real.

Then the your doctors will have more time to take care of the sickest one.

Rs and her husband, Dr Carlos Gonzalez, met in medical school in Puerto Rico.

They've served this queen's immigrant community for decades in their private practice.

How dangerous is this virus for health care workers?

Is terribly dangerous.

I had a stuff meeting with my dream medical assistance and you stop.

It broke my heart.

I tried toe toe, have a contingency plan off.

I reschedule seniors.

I check the temperature on the entrance of the office.

I saw two patients that were Neil, and I felt like I had no no defense on, I said, You know, this is not working.

I don't have the gear to protect my stuff for myself.

What started as a steady stream of cases in early March became a wave of sick patients crusting over this dense, working class corner of Queens.

Many of them leap in a public transportation.

Andi, I think it's my theory that because they use the subway and the bosses, you could never find an empty sidewalk is very crowded on.

These virus is so contagious, and in this case you feel defenseless.

In many ways, it's like fighting a monster with a water gun.

Dr.

Aris believes that her husband's job, which included checking patients for strep throat, put him at risk and may have exposed him to the virus.

And as a former E R doctor, what made your husband finally say I'm going to the E.

R?

He told me, I don't feel right on the breathing, right?

It's been 10 days since Dr Gonzalez tested positive for Cove in 19.

His wife had to leave him at the door of a Long Island hospital on the eve of what would have been a doubly special day.

The couple's 38th anniversary and Dr Gonzalez is 66th birthday.

How are you doing?

Both physically and emotionally.

I think physically I'm fine.

I think emotionally I'm trying to be strong, and yet you've joined the ranks of the patient population, unable to visit your loved one in the hospital.

I always go so hard.

I think that was that was the heart.

But I say we're like we've been together for so many years.

So hi.

With word of her husband's now stable condition, Dr Aris is focusing on her patients, right?

Call teleconferencing, day and night.

So if it was astonishing to me, is your husband's in the hospital fighting for his life and you're seeing 100 patients a day.

It's really a calling.

You have to the self plays in Puerto Rico.

We have a saying that once you sign up to be a soldier, you have to march for us.

As registered nurses were compelled to help and to heal.

Bonnie Castillo is the executive director of National Nurses United.

She says the lack of personal protective equipment is forcing medical professionals to make choices.

They should never have to make decisions, a CZ to whether they can work in conditions where they themselves could be calm vectors in the spread of this virus and actually cause harm instead of healing.

Mike Michael Cora.

Dockets has been an icy you nurse for 25 years.

But these past few weeks, he says, have left emotional scars.

I used to joke that you could only get PTSD if you have feelings.

Um, even the most hardened practitioner, you know, everybody cries it work.

It's just part of it now.

What triggers the tears?

People die alone now, and that's unusual.

I had a 35 year old patient die, you know, on me the other day with nothing significant is a medical history.

This is a horrible, horrible disease.

And so tell me about that patient.

He was my only patient for the first part of the 12 hour shift, Um, because he coded a couple of times during the day coded, meaning his heart had stopped.

Right phone ring.

It was his wife, and she said, Can we face time with him?

And I said, Absolutely.

So I straighten up the room.

I made sure that he looked nice for the call when, um, monitor started alarming.

I looked up in this.

Heartbreak was dropping, his blood pressure is dropping, and within just a minute or two he was almost gone.

So I just stopped what I was doing.

Like, I went with him, and, uh, I talkto I said that his wife was thinking about him, that I just spoken to her, you know, that his family loved him and missed him.

I'm just trying to say the things that I thought I might want to hear.

If it was May, I just called her and let her know that he had passed away.

And, um, she still wanted a face time with him.

And then she handed the phone around and came into their stun 10 or 12 year old boy, And, um, it was hard.

He just said, Just a poppy.

Poppy, please don't leave me alone in this world, You know, that was it hung up the phone and then didn't radio got him ready.

And then I got two more patients from the e.

R.

So bed stone stay empty for very long.

With this, it feels like combat, you know, I guess walking into combat, at least you know where the firing is coming from.

And you can shoot back way.

Walk into this without any weapons, you know, and you don't know where the enemy is.

Yeah.

Luckily in this hospital, we have way start pretty good peopIe personal protective equipment.

So I have not once gone without an N 95.

But there are hospitals around the country that have run out.

But the truth is, once your doctors and nurses die, you don't stand a chance.

If we die, you die.

And that is the truth.

Hi, everyone.

George Stephanopoulos here.

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