(Newer)
– Dr. Payman Simoni gave lip fillers to a patient last month who called a few days later to reveal that she had tested positive for the coronavirus – and on Friday, the 50-year-old plastic surgeon died of COVID-19. The Beverly Hills Doctor who appeared on the reality show The doctors and was well known in Hollywood, was tested Dec. 6 after being informed of his patient, who had her temperature checked and a COVID questionnaire completed prior to her procedure. He was positive for the virus, but was “fine” for about a week, family and friends tell CBS 2. “Yes, he always wore a mask,” says a family friend. “He was a doctor. And he took all the protocols.”
However, TMZ’s sources say that despite his mask, the patient was not wearing one and that she would have coughed and ‘sprayed’ him at some point during the procedure. In mid-December, he began to develop shortness of breath and soon received a ventilator in a Los Angeles hospital, where he was later placed in a medically induced coma and eventually died of a cerebral hemorrhage. “The shock is that he was so perfectly healthy,” the family friend says of the father of two. “He’s a doctor, I called him when I had COVID. He told me what to do.” People notes that the CDC halted elective proceedings at the start of the pandemic, but has since allowed them again. The Beverly Press notes that Beverly Hills was one of the first cities in the US to resume non-essential procedures. (Read more stories about the coronavirus.)