Initially, hospital officials handed Ms. Lundy a summons for disorderly conduct. But a week later, after the medical examiner ruled Ms. Marshall’s death a homicide, the police charged Ms. Lundy with manslaughter and assault.

“How do you put your hands on a 86-year-old woman?” said Ms. Marshall’s grandniece, Antoinette Leonard Jean Charles, 41, a medical student in Tennessee. “I also understand the fear level of every person in New York has. There is a notion of every man for themselves. But attacking an elderly person? That went too far.”

A spokesman for Brooklyn Defender Services, which is representing Ms. Lundy, declined to comment.

New York officials imposed social-distancing rules — maintaining space between people to stop the spread of the highly contagious coronavirus virus — in mid-March, shortly after the metropolis became the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States. The virus has claimed the lives of thousands of New Yorkers in a little more than a month.

In a statement, Woodhull hospital officials said they were cooperating with investigators.

“We are terribly saddened by this death,” the hospital said in a statement. “We are committed to ensuring a safe, health-focused environment in these very demanding times so our heroic health care workers can continue to deliver the quality, compassionate care New Yorkers need more than ever.”

The events that led to Ms. Marshall’s death began on March 27, when she told her niece she had a piercing stomachache. The niece, Eleanor Leonard, 72, called an ambulance, which took Ms. Marshall to Woodhull, where she had been treated for similar symptoms earlier in the week.