US virus death toll surges past 4,000

Emergency field hospitals were readied in New York’s Central Park and at the home of the US Open tennis tournament as the number of American deaths from the coronavirus pandemic surged past 4,000 – higher than the toll in China.

The pandemic has killed more than 1,700 New Yorkers and President Donald Trump, a native of the city, warned in Washington of “a very, very painful two weeks” to come for the entire country.

Already the hardest-hit area, America’s financial capital is in a race to ramp up hospital capacity before cases peak.

Around a dozen tents, equipped with 68 beds and 10 ventilators, have been put up in Manhattan’s iconic park, with Covid-19 patients expected to start arriving.

“You see movies like ‘Contagion’ and you think it’s so far from the truth, it will never happen. So to see it actually happening here is very surreal,” 57-year-old passerby Joanne Dunbar told AFP on Tuesday.

Declared coronavirus cases across the US surged to 189,510 early Wednesday, according to a running tally by Johns Hopkins

University, with 4,076 deaths.

That is more than the 3,310 fatalities reported by China.

New York state has seen far more cases – 76,000 – and deaths than any other since announcing its first infection on March 1 and quickly emerging as the epicenter of the US outbreak.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday the city was tripling hospital capacity in a bid to get ready for the peak of the pandemic expected in two to three weeks.

“(We) will require a level of hospital capacity we’ve never seen... never even conceived of,” he told NBC.

In New York, officials are already in full blown crisis management mode, scrambling to deal with the influx of sick when hospitals are already overwhelmed and medical supplies strained.

South of Central Park, the Javits Convention Center is now operational with nearly 3,000 beds after it was adapted by the Army Corps of Engineers.

It will take non-Covid-19 patients to ease the burden on hospitals focusing on the virus.

A few blocks away at Pier 90 sits the white, imposing US navy hospital ship Comfort, with 1,000 beds and 12 operating rooms – also for non-coronavirus patients.

A 350-bed facility at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing MeadowsCorona Park, where the US Open tennis takes place every summer, is due to start receiving coronavirus patients next week.

Governor Andrew Cuomo – whose brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, announced on Tuesday that he had the virus – warned New Yorkers that the fight to defeat Covid-19 was going to be a long one.

“Calibrate yourself and your expectations so you’re not disappointed every day you get up,” he told reporters. — AFP

You see movies like ‘Contagion’ and you think it’s so far from the truth, it will never happen. So to see it actually happening here is very surreal.

Joanne Dunbar