FEMA gives Apple $1B

Funds for hosp costs

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is making a special delivery: nearly $1 billion in emergency relief funds to New York City’s public-hospital system as health-care workers battle the Omicron outbreak.

FEMA’s allocation of $924.4 million is reimbursement for services the 11 public hospitals and five nursing facilities provided to very sick patients during the devastating initial COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, Sen. Charles Schumer told The Post on Wednesday night.

The city’s Health + Hospital system — particularly its Elmhurst hospital in Queens — served communities in the epicenter of the deadly surge during the spring of 2020.

So many patients died that makeshift morgues were set up outside the hospitals.

Schumer will formally announce the emergency funding Thursday in a joint press conference with Mayor Adams and Bronx Congressman Ritchie Torres.

The feds previously provided $266 million, bringing the total reimbursement to NYC Health +

Hospitals to $1.19 billion. The funding provides 100 percent reimbursement to cover staffing, equipment and patient care during the emergency and will help shore up the finances of the stretched-thin hospital system.

Schumer said he appealed to President Biden after complaining that FEMA had attempted to shortchange the city’s public medical facilities by reimbursing H+H for only a fraction of what was requested. He previously scrapped with FEMA over slow-walking the release of COVID funds.

“This is great news. I leaned on FEMA and the White House. Our hospitals were getting stiffed,” Schumer said.

“The funding couldn’t come at a better time, with the Omicron outbreak. Our hospitals need the money.”

Adams, who got a call from Schumer about the funds Wednesday, welcomed the federal support as he fights the raging COVID surge during his first week in office.

“Getting our city back means getting through this Omicron surge— and this reimbursement for our hospitals comes at a critical time for New York,” Adams said.