The family of a Chicago postal worker is demanding answers following her death from COVID-19 days after she was released from hospital, despite testing for positive for the virus while giving birth.
Unique Clay, 31, started running a fever while in labor at the University of Chicago Hospital on April 30, her father Alan Brown told Fox 32 Chicago.
Brown said his daughter was sent home with ibuprofen after giving birth and testing positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
“When they did let her go home, they gave her ibuprofen and we were told from watching the news that that feeds the virus itself, you’re supposed to give them Tylenol,” he said.
The mother-of-three’s newborn baby daughter appears to be healthy, her family told the station.
Clay, who lived in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, was pronounced dead at 8.47 p.m. on May 5, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The Cook County medical examiner’s officer said an autopsy found she died of COVID-19.
But Clay’s sister Dajah Brown said her family can’t understand why the hospital sent her home knowing she would find it difficult to recover from the virus while caring for a newborn baby.
“I don’t understand why she was sent home that quick, then being instructed to take medication that feeds into the disease. It was just not handled at all. Someone needs to be held accountable,” she told Fox 32 Chicago.
The family and the University of Chicago Hospital have been contacted for comment.
According to the Sun-Times, Clay had worked for the U.S. Postal Service for two years. The National Association of Letter Carriers told the newspaper that she is the first letter carrier to die of COVID-19 in Chicago, but more than 30 others in the city have tested positive for the virus.
Her colleagues and representatives of the union held a balloon release in her honor at Kilbourn Park on Saturday morning, the newspaper reported.
Mack Julion, the president of the union’s local chapter, told the Sun-Times that the U.S. Postal Service at first struggled to obtain the necessary personal protective equipment (PPE) for its workers, but has been “pretty good” at providing it recently.
He added that letter carriers were taking huge risks to do their jobs during the pandemic. “We may be not be first responders or health care workers, but we need this equipment in order to do our job as well and for our members to be safe,” he said.
The union and the U.S. Postal Service have been contacted for additional comment.
Chicago has more than 30,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 1,356 deaths, according to the latest figures from the city’s health department. Illinois has more than 77,000 confirmed cases and more than 3,400 deaths.
