A WOMAN whose husband died from the coronavirus had to say goodbye via Facetime, due to social distancing policies, and was not even allowed to attend his funeral.

Marini Smith's husband Rayshone tested positive for COVID-19 and was admitted to hospital on March 16.

That was the last time she saw him.

Just seven days after arriving at the hospital, Rayshone died.

Marini and her daughter were able to FaceTime Rayshone, who was at a hospital in Detroit.

"The nurse felt so bad for my daughter and I, she used her personal phone and FaceTimed us, which I thought was really, really nice," Marini told CNN.

"So, she let us speak with him, and I asked was he scared? He said ‘Yeah.’ Everybody that know my husband know he’s not afraid of anything, but he was very, very scared."

Marini and her daughter were not even allowed to go to Rayshone's funeral as they had to be in quarantine.

They had to make do with watching videos of the service that were recorded on a cell phone.

"I didn’t want him to leave here alone," she continued.

"I just feel like he was there for everybody, and I feel like he was alone. Nobody was able to be there for him."

Rayshone had had a high fever, and Marini said her father and brother have both tested positive for the virus since.

Marini has promised her daughter that they will hold a memorial service for Rayshone as soon as the pandemic is over.

The coronavirus has claimed 22,861 lives in the US alone, and there are 560,891 confirmed cases.

It was recently revealed a father of five died from coronavirus on his twin daughters' birthday after medics turned him away three times.

Rolando Aravena, 44, died on March 29 just weeks after he was sent to work at a Manhattan hospital.

The dad developed symptoms of COVID-19 on March 19, including fever, chills and muscle aches.

Aravena called the coronavirus hotline and reportedly waited for five hours on hold before he was scheduled for a test on March 26, just three days before the disease turned fatal.

As his condition started to worsen, the New Yorker went to clinics and the emergency room, but was dismissed with an inhaler and told to self-quarantine at home, according to his wife Melody.

On April 13, it emerged that leading medical experts had been sounding the alarm about the virus since January.

The "Red Dawn" email thread includes warnings of the vast scale of the outbreak that would hit the US, and disbelief when the federal government delayed lockdown measures.

More than 80 pages of the emails – named after the 1984 Patrick Swayze war movie Red Dawn – were revealed by the New York Times.

They include discussions on the looming crisis among dozens of experts from government agencies, health organizations and top universities weeks before the first confirmed case in the US.

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