Families "need some sort of closure," says Dr. Ee Tay, who organized the donations for her birthday

Doctor Secures 650 Tablets So Coronavirus Patients 'Dying Alone' Can See Loved Ones for Last Time

Dr. Ee Tay knew she wanted to do something special to help others for her birthday this year.

So when she learned from her colleagues at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital that many coronavirus patients were dying alone with no way to communicate with their loved ones, she made it her mission to wrangle up a set of tablets that could be used for video chatting.

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Thanks to social media and the help of Bank of New York Mellon, Tay was able to arrange for the donation of about 650 tablets to NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue, including Bellevue Hospital and other local hospitals like Elmhurst and Jacobi.

“To have that support, and know that your family is near and thinking of you, I think that’s really important for recovery,” Tay tells PEOPLE. “And [to know] that you’re not alone or you’re not dying alone.”

Tay, chief of the pediatric ER at Bellevue, celebrated her birthday on Wednesday, but launched her plea for help the previous Thursday after realizing that many family members were unable to see their loved ones in the hospital due to coronavirus restrictions meant to help stop the spread of the virus.

Image zoom Donations arrive at Bellevue Hospital

“It’s really important for the families,” she says. “They need some sort of closure.”

She settled on collecting tablets because talking over the phone can be extremely difficult for patients who have been intubated and are on a ventilator, and the visual aid that comes with apps like FaceTime are a much better option.

“Since you can’t have somebody physically being there, this is the next best thing,” she says. “Even though the patients can’t necessarily speak to the family members, the family members [can] perhaps bid them goodbye and [send] well wishes and words of comfort during that time.”

Image zoom Donations at Jacobi Hospital

Tay initially put the call for donations out to friends on Facebook, who soon helped her collect about 50 new and used iPads and Amazon Kindles, some of which were shipped directly to the hospitals.

By Sunday, a friend who works for Bank of New York Mellon had given the company word of the collection, and the bank wound up donating 600 additional tablets — 150 of which went to Bellevue, plus 60 each to Elmhurst and Jacobi.

With the bank helping Tay far surpass her initial goal of 150 tablets, she says she has plenty of other ideas for what to do with the leftover electronics, like donating them to other public hospitals and nursing homes in the city, and possibly to families in under-served communities.

Image zoom Tablets arrive at the hospital Courtesy Ee Tay

The doctor says she’s particularly motivated to help “underrepresented” immigrants communicate with hospitalized loved ones from home.

Many people “rely on jobs currently that are not there, and they can’t pay their bills,” she tells PEOPLE. “A lot don’t have access to WiFi or a tablet. If they have an inability to have access to any of these devices, I am hoping the ones that I have collected from my network will be able to help and assist them.”

The donated tablets will be kept in the hospitals, Tay says, and will remain at patients’ bedsides during their hospitalizations, making things easier for staffers who often rely on their own phones to connect patients to their families.

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“I hope that when people read this, they’ll be able to take it back to their own cities and then really reach out to the hospitals in need, and perhaps start something like this, and really restore humanity during this time of crisis for their local hospitals,” she says.

Bellevue, the country’s oldest public hospital, has been central to the coronavirus fight in New York City, the hardest-hit area in the United States. The state has seen 170,512 cases and 7,844 deaths attributed to coronavirus as of Friday afternoon, according to The New York Times.

Tay stresses the importance of social distancing when it comes to helping stop the virus’ spread.

“Please stay at home,” she says. “It saves lives.”