’What is going to happen to me?’: Undocumented immigrant recovered from COVID-19 learns his brother died of the disease

Felipe Idrovo is pictured in Queens, New York on Monday, April 20.
Felipe Idrovo is pictured in Queens, New York on Monday, April 20.(Gardiner Anderson/for New York Daily News)

Felipe Idrovo felt like he’d just about won his fight with COVID-19 when he woke up to several missed calls.
It was a woman, speaking English. Idrovo didn’t understand everything, but he knew it was urgent. He called the number.
“I said please tell me what happened,” he recounted to the Daily News about the April 11 call.
“They told me in English, ‘Mr. Idrovo I’m so sorry, your brother died at 6 a.m. this morning.’”
Pietro Idrovo, wheelchair-bound and severely disabled after a hit-and-run accident in 2011, had succumbed to COVID-19 it at the Park Terrace Care Center where he lived. He was 54.
Felipe Idrovo, left, and his brother Pietro Idrovo are pictured in this undated photo.
Felipe Idrovo, left, and his brother Pietro Idrovo are pictured in this undated photo. (Courtesy of Idrovo family)
“I cried and cried. It can’t be my brother. He was in a nursing home, he should have been cared for, and now he’s gone,” Idrovo, 51, recalled.
The death of his beloved brother was the hardest blow in a series of nightmarish events that overwhelmed Idrovo since the coronavirus outbreak in Queens at the end of March.
Pietro Idrovo, left, and Felipe Idrovo are pictured at a hospital.
Pietro Idrovo, left, and Felipe Idrovo are pictured at a hospital. (Courtesy of Idrovo family)
Things were bad from the beginning.
Idrovo was laid off from the warehouse where he the 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. shift packing items for a grocery store, was forced to move in a rush and couldn’t even find comfort at his suddenly shuttered church. When the phone store closed because of the virus, Idrovo couldn’t even pay his phone bill as normal.
His status as an undocumented immigrant from Ecuador makes him part of an especially vulnerable population for whom life in New York can feel like a tightrope walk with no safety net. Idrovo and migrants like him, living hand-to-mouth, had to continue to work as the city shut down, keeping vital industries ticking.
Felipe Idrovo is pictured in Queens, New York on Monday, April 20.
Felipe Idrovo is pictured in Queens, New York on Monday, April 20. (Gardiner Anderson/for New York Daily News)
But as the coronavirus infection exploded, many fell through the safety net programs that kept most at-risk New Yorkers afloat during tough times.
Idrovo was one of the lucky ones: He had a support system when he became sick. After he started to feel feverish, a friend told him to get a free test at Elmhurst Hospital. He lined up at 5 a.m. on March 25. At 8 a.m., a nurse in full protective gear stuck a swab so deep inside his nose that he cried out.
“I felt it going inside, inside, almost to my soul,” he said.
Idrovo was told someone would contact him in three to five days. Then sent home to struggle alone against the throes of the deadly virus, Idrovo still had people looking out for him, through his involvement with Make the Road, a nonprofit that helps immigrants navigate life in New York City and elsewhere.
After an acquaintance who’d seen Idrovo’s post on Facebook about feeling unwell spoke with him, the friend called for an ambulance. He was rushed to Elmhurst Hospital.
“It was so full, it looked like a rock concert for Ozzy Osbourne or something,” he told The News. “I saw a sign that said ‘isolation room,’ which usually means there’s one person there alone. But there wasn’t one bed. There were people even sitting, not even in beds, because there weren’t any.”
Idrovo improved and went home a short time later. He was just starting to get his strength back when he began to get worrying calls about his brother, who was taken to a hospital and was intubated, and then needed a tracheotomy.
When Pietro died, Idrovo had new worries: how to pay $5-6,000 to bury his adored brother.
“I was worried because I know the city is sending people who aren’t claimed to those anonymous graves,” Idrovo said.
Felipe Idrovo, right, and his brother Pietro Idrovo are pictured in a photograph from 2019.
Felipe Idrovo, right, and his brother Pietro Idrovo are pictured in a photograph from 2019. (Courtesy Felipe Idrovo/for New York Daily News)
Since his brother was a U.S. citizen, and had been injured in a hit-and-run accident, the city would pay for his wake and burial in a plot that Idrovo picked after the initial incident.
“What happens to undocumented people who lose their spouse? Where will they get the money? A lot of people don’t know who to call… [but] they cry because they know that their relative will be sent to the pit,” he said.
Idrovo said he knows what would help migrants like himself in times like these — isolated and often afraid to seek help if they are undocumented.

“A lot of people who come here come from the countryside, they cross the rivers, they don’t have command over the language,” he told The News. “They don’t socialize outside of their families,” he said.

“Thats what I would say to the city, to put out more information in the media.”
Felipe Idrovo is pictured in Queens, New York on Monday, April 20.
Felipe Idrovo is pictured in Queens, New York on Monday, April 20. (Gardiner Anderson/for New York Daily News)
There are lingering problems for Idrovo too. He has a $1,309 ambulance bill, the only part of his hospital trip that was not covered by Medicaid.
“[I thought] where am I going to get this money? Because I’m not working, and there’s no one I can ask for it because no one is working,” Idrovo said, worried about how he’ll manage to keep his apartment while simultaneously sending rent money to his elderly parents and two sons in Ecuador.
“Now my brother is going to be buried here, and what is going to happen to me?”

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