Mourning a healthcare worker and 'supermom'

"It's not fair the way she died," 18-year-old Minnoli Aya said of her mother, Madhvi Aya, who died after treating coronavirus patients as a physician's assistant in New York.

This report produced by Jillian Kitchener.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) DAUGHTER OF HEALTHCARE WORKER WHO DIED OF COVID-19, MINNOLI AYA, SAYING: "She didn't deserve to pass away the way she did.

She deserved to live and see me graduate and become a doctor and get married and have kids... Eighteen-year-old Minnoli Aya never got the chance to say goodbye, in person, to her mother Madhvi… who ultimately lost her fight against the coronavirus.

Madhvi Aya was a physician’s assistant who died after treating coronavirus patients in New York at the height of the outbreak.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) DAUGHTER OF HEALTHCARE WORKER WHO DIED OF COVID-19, MINNOLI AYA, SAYING: "You know, she just wasn't my mother, she was my best friend... (flash) It's not fair the way she died..." Minnoli - a freshman with the hopes of becoming a trauma surgeon - began texting her mother who was too weak to answer her phone.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) DAUGHTER OF HEALTHCARE WORKER WHO DIED OF COVID-19, MINNOLI AYA, SAYING: "And her last text to me was Thursday.

And I was just talking to her about college and stuff, because I was doing college from home, and it was a weird adjustment.

And I'm like, 'I need you home.

I need to talk to you about so much.'

You know, and she's like, 'You know I promise I'll come home.

And I love you.'

And that was the last time I ever talked to her.

And it just sucks because like I actually had hoped she was coming home, and that I would get to talk to her and tell her everything.

And I continued texting her until her death and even a few days after her passing.

I kept texting her, wanting to believe that it wasn't true that she had passed away." Madhvi told her husband and daughter that she had treated infected patients while wearing only a surgical mask, which offers little protection from the airborne infection.

And while the Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn, New York declined to comment on Madhvi’s case - or whether it had provided staff with enough protective gear - Minnoli says she’s appalled by the lack of protection for healthcare workers on the frontline: (SOUNDBITE) (English) DAUGHTER OF HEALTHCARE WORKER WHO DIED OF COVID-19, MINNOLI AYA, SAYING: "I like to use the analogy, or I like to believe that doctors are our soldiers when it comes to fighting against these invisible little enemies or these viruses, and you would never send a soldier into battle without any protection or ammo or guns, so why are you sending our doctors into a battle with no protective gear to save them?” Nurses have expressed similar outrage... having protested widespread shortages of protective equipment… saying they need to stay safe in order to save others.

Reuters identified 51 U.S. healthcare workers - Madhvi included - who have died after being diagnosed with or showing symptoms of the virus.

But with no official tally - the total could be much higher.