COVID-19 has killed dozens of 9/11 first responders - NBC News

11, 2001, terror attacks while in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the ranks of the nearly 200,000 Americans who have died from COVID-19 have been filled by dozens of heroes like these who risked their lives to save others when the twin towers fell.

“Gross undercount” were the words New York City attorney Michael Barasch used in a recent interview in which he revealed that 22 of the 20,000 9/11 first responders and survivors he represented with ground zero-related illnesses had died of COVID-19.

Since then, Barasch has learned that five times more 9/11 first responders died of the coronavirus than he first thought.

“Of these individuals, more than 100 have died of COVID-19 because of ground zero-related diseases," Barasch’s spokeman, Patrick Rheaume, said Friday in a statement.

John Feal, a demolition supervisor at ground zero who runs the Fealgood Foundation, which advocates on behalf of the first responders, said he knows of at least four dozen who came down with the disease and more than a thousand who have tested positive.

Feal, who lost part of his left foot after a 4-ton steel beam fell on it at ground zero, said he felt like his body was on fire and, at the same time, it was so hard to breathe he felt like he was drowning.

Knox, 84, a former New York City firefighter who came out of retirement to help search for bodies at ground zero, died in March.

While Trump has repeatedly praised his administration’s response to the pandemic, the United States now accounts for over a fifth of the world’s more than 910,000 coronavirus fatalities and 28 million confirmed cases, according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 dashboard.

“The response to the pandemic by the federal government has been a disaster, just atrocious,” Feal said?