Photo of US doctor Joseph Varon comforting elderly Covid-19 patient goes viral
- Heart-warming photo shows Texas doctor embracing patient in hospital intensive care unit
- Image was captured by Getty photographer and has gone viral around the world
Joseph Varon, a doctor treating coronavirus patients at a Texas hospital, was working his 252nd day in a row when he spotted a distraught elderly man in the Covid-19 intensive care unit (ICU).
Varon’s comforting embrace of the white-haired man on Thanksgiving Day was captured by a photographer for Getty Images and has gone viral around the world.
Varon, chief of staff at United Memorial Medical Centre in Houston, told CNN he was entering the Covid ICU when he saw the elderly patient “out of his bed and trying to get out of the room”.
“And he’s crying,” Varon said. “So I get close to him and I (ask) him: ‘Why are you crying?’”
“And the man says: ‘I want to be with my wife’. So I just grab him and I hold him,” Varon said. “I was feeling very sorry for him. I was feeling very sad, just like him.”
“Eventually he felt better and he stopped crying,” Varon told CNN on Monday, which he said was his 256th consecutive day of work.