STILL ‘GOING UP MOUNTAIN’
As toll rises, hosp set for Open site
Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio warned Tuesday that New York has likely only seen the tip of the coronavirus iceberg, even as the state’s death toll topped 1,500 and city hospitals scrambled to make room for thousands of new COVID-19 patients.
In his daily briefing from Albany, Cuomo reported there are now more than 75,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in New York, accounting for nearly half of all infections in the U.S. At least 1,550 New Yorkers have died and nearly 11,000 are hospitalized, Cuomo said in the morning briefing, though the devastating numbers keep rising by the hour.
“We’re still going up the mountain,” the governor said. “The main battle is on the top of the mountain, at the apex. That’s what we are planning for now.”
De Blasio said that apex may not be reached for another month.
“We have to look at this pattern and conclude that the worst is certainly in the next few weeks at a minimum. I could see it going into May,” the mayor said in an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show.
In an alarming national development, the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus climbed past 4,000 on Tuesday, eclipsing the official count in China, where the virus originated last year. The White House warned that upward of 240,000 deaths in the U.S. are likely before all is said and done.
The Big Apple is the worsthit area in the U.S. and bears the brunt of New York’s burden, with nearly 42,000 confirmed cases as of Tuesday afternoon, according to Health Department data.
More than two-thirds of New York’s COVID-19 deaths
— 1,096 as of 5 p.m. Tuesday — have occurred in the five boroughs.
A heart-crushing 332 New Yorkers died between Monday and Tuesday morning, averaging nearly 14 deaths every hour, according to officials.
As the devastating numbers piled up, city, state and federal officials teamed up to tackle the pandemic head-on.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency and City Hall announced a partnership securing 250 more ambulances for NYC. About 75 of the ambulances will be used to respond to regular 911 calls and the rest will be set aside to transport patients to medical sites, such as the recently completed 1,000-bed field hospital at Javits Center and the Navy’s newly arrived 1,000-bed hospital ship Comfort.
In addition, 500 backup EMTs and paramedics will come to the city under the deal to assist medical personnel stretched thin because of the pandemic.
“I promised them help was on the way,” de Blasio said, “and today it is.”
In another bid to relieve pressure on Gotham’s overwhelmed health care system, the city confirmed it is transforming the U.S. Open tennis complex in Queens’ Flushing Meadows-Corona Park into a 350-bed field hospital.
Like the USNS Comfort, the Queens field facility is expected to accommodate noncoronavirus patients in order to allow city hospitals to focus mainly on fighting the virus.
With the number of cases growing by the day, de Blasio also said the city is planning to rent hotel rooms en masse and transform them into nonintensive care units for COVID-19 patients. In some cases, de Blasio said the city may lease “entire hotels.”
The mayor said he discussed the plans with officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “They have really simple things they do to flip a switch basically, and turn a hotel into a hospital,” de Blasio said on NY1.