Payman Simoni, Plastic Surgeon Who Appeared on 'The Doctors', Dead at 50 From COVID-19

Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Payman Simoni has died from complications related to COVID-19. Simoni, who appeared the talk show The Doctors, died Friday from a brain hemorrhage after being hospitalized in Los Angeles with the virus, family sources told TMZ. He was 50.

According to the outlet, the plastic surgeon contracted the virus after being exposed while performing a cosmetic procedure on one of his patients who was COVID-19 positive. The City of Beverly Hills passed a resolution allowing cosmetic surgery offices to remain open, and Simoni performed a lip injection on a woman in December. During the procedure, the woman coughed on Simoni, who was wearing a mask. Although the woman was temperature checked and filled out a COVID questionnaire before the elective procedure, she later contacted the office to inform them she had tested positive for the virus.

Simoni immediately entered quarantine and soon began experiencing symptoms of the virus, including shortness of breath. He was later admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and placed on a ventilator. As his condition worsened and his lungs began to fail, he was placed in a medically induced coma. He remained in the hospital up until his death Friday of a brain hemorrhage.

Amid surging cases across the country, the City of Beverly Hills passed a resolution allowing cosmetic surgery offices to remain open. Many offices opted to temporarily stop elective surgeries due to the rise in coronavirus cases around the area. Southern California is currently a coronavirus hotspot, with The New York Times reporting over the weekend that Los Angeles County is set to reach a level in the coming days where one in 10 residents has tested positive for the virus. The county currently has a coronavirus-related death every eight minutes, averaging 187 deaths a day in the seven-day period ending Friday, the most of any American county and double the nation's per capita rate.

"In the City of Los Angeles and in our county, Covid-19 is now everywhere and infecting more people than ever," the mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, told reporters Thursday. "I'm on the phone every single day with the families who have lost their breadwinners, their parents, their children. We continue to see more people, who don't have underlying conditions, dying from this."

Nationwide, coronavirus cases have nearly reached 22.5 million, according to a Johns Hopkins coronavirus map. More than 374,000 people have died, with global deaths surpassing 1.9 million.