Famous Plastic Surgeon Died From COVID-19 After Giving Lip Fillers to a Patient

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• One of Hollywood’s leading plastic surgeons died on Friday from COVID-19 complications after reportedly contracting the virus from a patient who later tested positive.
• Dr. Payman Simoni, 50, died of a brain hemorrhage after his condition and breathing worsened, according to TMZ reports.
• Kati Amiri-Younesi, a family friend, told CBS News that Simoni followed all the protocols and wore a mask throughout the procedure where he performed a lip injection on the patient.

Celebrity plastic surgeon Dr. Payman Simoni died of COVID-19-related complications on Friday after catching the virus from a patient, family friend Katy Amiri-Younesi told CBS News.

Reports say that Simoni, 50, who appeared on the show, “The Doctors”, wore a mask while performing a lip injection procedure on a female patient last month.

“He was wearing a mask at all times. He was a physician. And he took all the protocols,” Amiri-Younesi told CBS News.

Prior to her appointment, the patient had her temperature taken and was cleared. But a few days later, the same patient called Simoni’s office to inform them that she had tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

After receiving the patient’s call, Simoni had himself tested for the virus on December 6 and received a positive result. He immediately went into quarantine but had to be transferred to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and put on a ventilator due to breathing difficulties.  

At the hospital, Simoni’s health quickly deteriorated. TMZ reported that he was eventually put in a medically induced coma before dying of a brain hemorrhage while in the coma.

Simoni, a graduate from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, is a “double board-certified facial plastics expert” who has perfected advanced rhinoplasty techniques”, according to his official website.

Amiri-Younesi told CBS that Simoni’s death came as a shock because he was very healthy. “He’s a doctor, I called him when I had COVID. He was instructing me what to do.”

When the pandemic hit last year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) banned elective surgeries to help prevent the spread of the virus. But according to Infection Control Today, the agency issued new guidelines in May for clinics and other facilities looking to resume performing non-coronavirus healthcare including elective procedures.

On Saturday, Beverly Hills became the first county in the US to report more than 1 million coronavirus cases since the pandemic began last year.

Source: PEOPLE