Monday March 30, 2020
Clinics overloaded due to Corona
New York builds a hospital in Central Park
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The peak of the Corona crisis is far from being reached, but New York is already on the verge of catastrophe. In the middle of Central Park, patients are to be cared for in a field hospital in the future. And suddenly many are struggling to survive financially as well.
A field hospital in the middle of Central Park, a mass rush to the blackboards and a mayor calling for medical support from the army: In the Corona crisis, New York is like a war zone. The otherwise vibrant US coastal metropolis is preparing for an impending disaster due to the pandemic.
Experts do not expect the peak of the corona pandemic in the USA for around two weeks, but the hospitals in New York are already threatened with overload. Mayor Bill de Blasio warned on Sunday that the protective equipment available in the city’s clinics would only last for a week. In an urgent application to the government in Washington, he called on military medics for assistance.
The Christian US aid organization Samaritan’s Purse meanwhile made nails with heads. In Central Park, she set up a field hospital for corona patients at the weekend. The construction of the hospital is being carried out in coordination with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, the US civil protection agency and the clinic operator Mount Sinai, explains doctor and Samaritan’s Purse employee Elliott Tenpenny. The goal is to admit the first patients this week. “The hospitals all over town are filling up and need all the help they can get.” According to Tenpenny, up to 68 corona patients can be admitted to the hospital.
The organization, which was founded in the 1970s, normally operates in crisis areas hit by war or natural disasters. “Usually these are international missions after disasters – but the US is now in dire straits and so we are here to help our own country,” says Tenpenny.
Waiting for a one-off payment
The table operators in New York are also observing an emergency in the city – also on a social level. City Harvest alone, which operates several food distribution centers, had hundreds of customers over the weekend.
She is here for the first time, says 40-year-old Lina Alba when visiting an open-air table in Washington Heights. Up until two weeks ago, the 40-year-old mother of five worked as a waitress in a hotel in Manhattan that has now been closed due to the Corona crisis. Her two oldest children have also become unemployed as a result of the crisis. “We need the help now. This is crazy. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few weeks.”
Alba reports long waiting times at the social welfare offices. It took a week before she could formally register her unemployment. She now has to wait three weeks for social benefits to be paid out. In addition, she hopes to soon receive a one-time cash payment of $ 1200, which the US government is planning in its trillion-dollar Corona aid program for citizens. “It won’t be enough, but at least it’s something,” says Alba. “A lot of people” need help now. “It’s the whole, entire city.”
Slipping into poverty
The closure of almost all stores in New York two weeks ago has spawned many fates similar to Alba, says Geraldine Fermin, who works for the city Harvest. “People who were poor are now poorer, and people who had decent jobs that kept them afloat are now poor too.”
Before the crisis, 1.2 million people in New York were dependent on help, says the vice-boss of the table operator, Eric Ripert. “Now there are three times as many.” He sees the corona crisis as unprecedented. “We survived September 11, 2001, the great recession of 2008/2009. We have survived a lot, but nothing compares to the catastrophe we are experiencing now.”
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