Words by David Olson, Photos and Video by Jeffrey Basinger
Manuel Carchipulla watched with tears in his eyes as his wife, Diana Garcia Garcia, gave birth late one night at Mount Sinai South Nassau hospital.
Mixed with the joy of seeing their first child was an intense sadness and pain. He had tested positive for the coronavirus that morning, April 28, so he had to watch the birth alone from more than 20 miles away, on a smartphone screen.
“It hurts me so much,” Carchipulla said in Spanish from the couple’s home in Jackson Heights, Queens, as his newborn daughter, Danaey, cried a few feet from an iPad that a surgical technologist pointed toward Garcia in a labor and delivery room in Oceanside.
