81-year old Las Vegas doctor dies from Covid-19

DR. ARTHUR TAYENGCO

Eighty-one-year-old Dr. Arthur Tayengco, a Filipino Aemrican ob-gyn practitioner in Las Vegas, was past the age of retirement but he chose to continue his practice because he loved helping his patients. 

Because of his advanced age, he was vulnerable to Covid-19 but that didn't stop the physician answer the call for help from overburdened health workers and hospitals.

After two of his employees in his office contracted the coronavirus, he, too,became ill mid-March. Tayengco self-isolated at home until April 5 when he was brought to the hospital where stayed for 16 days. He was immediately placed on a ventilator. He died in the early hours of April 22.

“He loved medicine. He just wouldn’t stop. I kept asking, ‘Don’t you want to retire yet?’ He would say, ‘No, I’m not done,’” his eldest daughter Michele Tayengco, told Christina Oriel of the Asian Journal.

Born in Iloilo City, Philippines on Oct. 18, 1938, Tayengco received his medical degree from the University of the East Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Medical Center College of Medicine in Manila.

“First his front office staff tested positive, which meant somehow it wandered into the office and then he tested positive. We assumed its something within the office. But being the workaholic he was, he also practiced at the women’s prison in north Las Vegas. Maybe something from there we don’t know but that’s also a hot spot,” said his daughter Michelle.

Over his 48-year practice in Las Vegas, Tayengco instructed hundreds of residents over the years as a clinical assistant professor at the University of Las Vegas School of Medicine.