CNN’s Sara Sidner was overcome with emotion Tuesday as she reported on the “heartache” she saw at the 10th COVID-19 unit she’s covered.
“You know, this is the 10th hospital that I have been — I’m sorry. This is the 10th… I apologize. I’m going to try to get through this,” she said during a live hit on “New Day.”
Sidner began again.
“This is the 10th hospital that I have been in and to see the way that these families have to live after this and the heartache that goes so far and so wide, it’s really hard to take,” she said, beginning to cry in earnest before apologizing to anchor Alisyn Camerota.
“No apology needed,” Camerota said. “We’ve been watching your reporting on the ground throughout this horrific year and we have all been struck by the grief, the collective grief, that all of us are in. To see these families who are soldiering through it, who are persevering and who are having to have these funerals in parking lots like the ones you showed us — it is just a collective trauma that all of us are living through. Sara, we all appreciate the heart you bring to this every single day as well as your excellent reporting.”
Sidner said, “It’s just not OK. It’s not OK what we are doing to each other. These families should not be going through this. No family should be going through this.”
She then urged viewers to do whatever they could to stop the spread of COVID-19, reminding them, “You have to do your part.”
The reporter was praised across Twitter for having the audience “in tears” as well as having the “compassion and the unblinking courage it takes to stand in the presence of this horrific situation and report it.”
Watch the clip of Sidner here and above.