This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic.

Back in early January, before the first coronavirus case turned up in the United States, Kious Kelly, an assistant nurse manager at Mount Sinai West in Manhattan, was singled out in the hospital’s blog — not for helping to make someone well, but for helping a family deal with a patient’s death.

“Assistant Nurse Manager Kious Jordan Kelly, RN, showed my mom and us empathy and compassion that helped us get through the weekend and what was to come,” a man named Joseph Fuoco had written to the hospital’s president. “He went above and beyond.”

Just a few weeks later, it was Mr. Kelly’s family members and friends who would need empathy and compassion. He died on March 24, about a week after being placed on a ventilator. He may have been the first nurse in New York to succumb to the illness.

His death, at age 48, was reported all over the country and beyond, and friends and colleagues used it to highlight the shortage of protective gear for medical personnel. It was a far different sort of fame than Mr. Kelly might have dreamed of when he first arrived in New York years ago from the Midwest.