It happened so quickly he was never tested for Covid-19, but his brother believes he was among the hundreds of undiagnosed cases that, for weeks, have been excluded from the official coronavirus death toll.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said today that the city would begin counting victims like Bass who weren't tested, including those dying at home whose symptoms fit certain parameters.
"It's just horrendous. The numbers speak for themselves. This used to be a very, very rare thing in New York City and suddenly it's jumped up. The only thing that's changed is Covid-19," de Blasio told reporters.
A year ago, the New York City Fire Department was receiving an average of 64 calls for cardiac arrest per day, generally with no more than half of those patients dying, FDNY spokesman James Long said.
"Now, in this pandemic, we are seeing more than 300 cardiac arrest calls each day, with well over 200 people dying each day," Long wrote in an email.
Casualties have been undercounted worldwide, experts say, due not only to limits in testing but the different ways nations count the dead — not to mention deliberate under-reporting by some governments.
The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued new guidance saying it is acceptable to count undiagnosed Covid-19 cases as "probable" or "presumed" coronavirus deaths under circumstances that are "compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty."
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he was also interested in trying to find a way to account for people who die at home without being tested.
Bass believed he had been getting better in the days before his death and continued working for Phoenix House, which provides residential and outpatient treatment at multiple locations in New York City and Long Island.
He had a weakened immune system, his brother said, but "nothing life-threatening and nothing terminal."
He collapsed in the lift of his building in Manhattan's East Village neighbourhood after calling for an ambulance because he could not breathe. Officials at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, the hospital where Bass was taken, declined to comment on his death.
Ann-Marie Foster, the president and chief executive officer of Phoenix House, said her organisation had at least two patients who had tested positive for coronavirus, but added it was not clear whether Bass had dealings with them.
She said she received an email from Bass at 6.27pm local time on March 27, the evening before his death.
"He was there in the office up until Friday caring for patients and helping write policies," Foster told AP. "We've lost a gem."
There have been similar uncounted fatalities among healthcare workers.
An emergency room physician at East Orange General Hospital outside Newark, Frank Gabrin, died on March 31 from what his loved ones and colleagues described as coronavirus complications.
A cancer survivor who also was never tested for Covid-19, Gabrin died in his husband's arms, at home in New York City, days after developing symptoms that included a dry cough, aches and fever.
The actual coronavirus death toll will be better understood when the pandemic is finally over, based on an a review of fatalities in out-of-hospital settings, said Dr Mitchell Katz, president and chief executive officer of NYC Health and Hospitals, the largest municipal health system in the country.
"If an older person was found dead in their home, it would not be easy to know whether they succumbed to Covid without ever having been brought to diagnosis, or whether they succumbed to cardiac arrest," Katz told reporters recently.
"I think there will be ways, when all of this horror that we're living through is done, to try to study these things," he added. "But I think, right now, everybody is in the moment trying to save as many lives as they can."
- AP
