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Well-known Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, Dr. Payman Simoni, died on Friday of a brain hemorrhage potentially related to COVID-19. He was 50 years old.
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Simoni, who appeared on the television show “The Doctors”, may have contracted the virus from a patient while giving lip injections.
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The doctor was wearing a mask during the procedure, said his longtime friend.
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Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Payman Simoni died of cerebral hemorrhage on Friday after the test was positive for coronavirus, his longtime friend Katy Amiri-Younesi told CBS News.
Before his death, Simoni, 50, had given a routine lip-filling injection to a patient while wearing a mask, Amiri-Younesi told CBS News. A few days later, the same patient called to tell Simoni that she tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
“He was wearing a mask the whole time,” Amiri-Younesi told CBS News. “He was a doctor. And he took all the protocols.”
The patient had her temperature measured and cleaned before her appointment, People.com reported.
After receiving the patient’s call, Simoni took a COVID-19 test on December 6 and tested positive, Amiri-Younesi told CBS News. A week later, his health started to deteriorate and he needed to be put on a respirator at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center due to the difficulty in breathing.
“The shock is that he was perfectly healthy,” Amiri-Younesi told CBS News. “He’s a doctor. I called him when I was with COVID. He was instructing me on what to do.”
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Councilman John Mirisch told Beverly Press that it was a mistake to allow cosmetic procedures to resume in the city.
“We must err on the side of caution,” said Mirisch. “Nobody needs Botox in the middle of a pandemic.”
He added: “It is a tragedy if someone has to die because of this. There is no point in dying from lip fillers.”
Simoni, a well-known Beverly Hills surgeon who appeared on “The Doctors”, was eventually put into an induced coma due to his worsening condition. He died of cerebral hemorrhage during the coma, according to TMZ.
This week, there are 11,366 new cases of COVID-19 in Los Angeles, according to the county’s public health department. Los Angeles County is the first U.S. county to exceed 1 million COVID-19 cases, with a total of 1,014,662 on Monday.
Mayor Lester Friedman told the Beverly Press that elective procedures, which are normally considered lip fillers, have been allowed since April 28 under state and county guidelines, on condition that doctors and patients use their judgment to determine whether such procedures were essential.
“We specifically do not recommend [cosmetic surgery], neither the state nor the county, “Friedman told the Beverly Press.
Friedman told Beverly Press that Simoni has not been proven to contract his patient’s virus during a procedure.
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