Tents waiting for the sick in Central Park, others erected in front of hospitals, the Manhattan Conference Center converted into a hospital, soon followed by the sports center of Flushing Meadows: New York is undergoing a metamorphosis to be able to treat tens of thousands of coronavirus patients. A dozen tents erected in Central Park since Sunday were preparing for Tuesday to welcome up to 70 patients sick with the virus from the nearby Mount Sinai hospital.
“We see films like Contagion and we think that will never happen, so seeing it for real is really surreal, ”says Joanne Dunbar, 57, who came to witness the transformation of this emblematic place. After eight days of work carried out by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the Javits Center conference center in Manhattan is now operational, with nearly 3,000 beds intended for patients without the coronavirus, for allow hospitals to focus on the epidemic.
A few streets further on, the imposing white silhouette of the military hospital ship Comfort, arrived Monday with a capacity of 1000 beds, stands out in the middle of the skyscrapers.
We have approximately 20,000 beds across New York City. We hope all will be turned into intensive care beds for COVID-19 patients.
Other sites have been spotted across America’s first metropolis to serve as hospitals, including one of the buildings at the Flushing Meadows tennis complex in the Queens neighborhood, as well as hotels to be able to isolate infected people, but not seriously ill.
The economic capital of the United States and the state of New York in general, which had nearly 76,000 cases and 1,550 deaths Tuesday by midday, are racing against time to increase hospital capacity before the peak of the epidemic, expected within “7 to 21 days,” according to Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said Tuesday that his brother, a CNN presenter, was also infected. He called on New Yorkers to “calibrate their expectations” so that they are not disappointed every day when they wake up to see the situation worsen.
“We have about 20,000 beds across New York City,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio. “We hope that all will be turned into intensive care beds for COVID-19 patients.”
Palpable concern
“New Yorkers are in a difficult situation, and we are trying to do the best to open places to alleviate the increase in the number of cases,” said on CNN Dr. Anthony Fauci, an expert in infectious diseases who advises the President Donald Trump on this crisis.
In this metropolis which has never been so deserted and silent, where now resonates in the evening, as in many European cities, applause saluting the nursing staff, the concern is more and more palpable. Masks are everywhere, and buildings have “never been cleaned so much,” said Joel Quesada, a cleaner at a Manhattan building complex, where he has gone from 40 to 55 hours per week.
If New York is more than ever the epicenter of the epidemic, with more than half of American cases, the entire world power now lives in concern with 175,000 cases recorded for 3,415 dead, a number of deaths now more important than the official Chinese record.
More than three in four Americans are now under strict containment orders. Most major cities are affected, and outbreaks that have appeared in Chicago or New Orleans in recent days are worsening. Even rural states, like Montana, which have very few confirmed cases, are calling for masks and testing kits from the federal government.
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