Indian-origin Miss England 2019, Bhasha Mukherjee, resumed her career as a doctor as the deadly coronavirus continues to ravage through the UK.
The Kolkata born junior doctor, who had decided to take a break from her career and focus on humanitarian work, returned to the UK to serve the nation in its fight against the virus. She will be in quarantine for 14 days before resuming her work.
Mukherjee had been in India for four weeks when, at the beginning of March, she began to receive messages from her former colleagues at the Pilgrim Hospital in Boston, she told CNN.
"I wanted to come back home. I wanted to come and go straight to work," she told the channel. She also added that for her, it felt wrong to wear the Miss England crown amid the pandemic while her colleagues are working hard to save lives.
24-year-old Mukherjee was crowned Miss England in August last year.
"It wasn't a tough decision, I've been to Africa, Turkey, and India was the first of the Asian countries I was going to travel to. After India, I had several other countries that had to be cut short because of obviously the coronavirus. I knew the best place for me would be back at the hospital," she said.
The return comes at a time when the COVID-19 has also put the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in hospital.
The number of coronavirus hospital deaths in the UK reached 5,373 and the UK's Department of Health said there were now over 52,000 confirmed coronavirus cases.