Pineda has been manning the triage section of his hospital’s COVID-19 emergency unit.
With the more than 40 beds occupied by patients in critical condition, and the hallway lined with more patients in wheelchairs, Pineda had to decide who would get treatment and who would not.
He turned away more than half the people who came begging him to take in an ailing loved one, many of them struggling to breathe.
Some even knelt in front of him, begging to at least be allowed to wait in the hallway.
“Many of them said we were already the eighth or ninth hospital they tried, and if it were up to me, I really would have taken them in,” he said. “But there really was no room left.”
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