Nurse paramedic killed by Covid after treating patient who had it
A nurse who also worked as a paramedic has been killed by coronavirus her colleagues are convinced she caught from one of her patients. Captain Kelly Raether, 42, was killed by Covid-19 last Thursday, a month after a call out to the Covid patient’s home in Ixonia, Wisconsin.
Raether, who worked with her local fire department, was called out with an ambulance to a sick patient who tested positive for Covid the next day. Ixonia fire chief Dave Schilling was on-call with Raether at the time, but didn’t catch the virus.
Raether’s loved ones say the late paramedic avoided going to parties and bars to try and keep herself and others safe, only to ultimately lose her life because of her work.
He said Raether was convinced she’d recover from Covid, only to succumb to the virus after being admitted to hospital, where her health gradually failed.
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Schilling told WISN: ‘She was absolutely convinced that she was going to go into the hospital, get straightened out, and come back out again and go about her normal life again.’
Raether also worked as am emergency room nurse at Aurora Medical Center in Hartford, Wisconsin, and as a professor at Carroll University nursing school.
Her former university colleague Dr Terri Kaul said Raether’s death was ‘devastating’ and paid tribute to the nurse as ‘awesome.’
Schilling says Raether’s death is considered to have happened in the line of duty.
And he has also planned a moving tribute to his late colleague. The fire chief said: ‘(Her) locker will remain empty. I’m not gonna replace (her). No one is going to be going into that locker.’
Coronavirus has now infected more than 13.7million Americans, and killed close to 271,000.
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