Crews have begun assembling triage tents outside New York City hospitals that are already overwhelmed by coronavirus victims.
The Mount Sinai system is setting up the temporary treatment facilities outside six of its hospitals – five in New York City and one in Long Island – as it prepares for a projected influx of COVID-19 patients.
‘The tents will be critical in helping us limit the spread of the disease between patients and staff,’ hospital officials said in a statement last week, adding that they will expand the emergency room ‘footprint’.
On Sunday workers began erecting tents in Central Park that will service overflow patients at Mount Sinai West Hospital.
Crews are seen assembling a triage site for coronavirus patients from Mount Sinai West Hospital in Central Park on Sunday
The temporary triage site is one of six being set up outside Mount Sinai hospitals in New York City and Long Island
Workers are seen unfolding tents and spacing them out on a grassy field as dozens of boxes of supplies waited to be unpacked
A patient is seen arriving at Mount Sinai West Hospital on Thursday
More than 33,000 coronavirus cases and 678 deaths have been confirmed in New York City as of Sunday
The Central Park site is located near Columbus Circle, a few hundred yards from the Mount Sinai West emergency room on W 59th Street.
Workers were seen unfolding massive tents and spacing them out on a grassy field where dozens of boxes of supplies waited to be unpacked.
Mount Sinai West made headlines earlier this month after a photo emerged of three of its nurses wearing black garbage bags as makeshift gowns amid a dire shortage of personal protective equipment.
On Tuesday, one of its nurses, 48-year-old Kious Kelly, died at the hospital after contracting coronavirus.
There are also plans in place to put up tents outside Mount Sinai Beth Israel in Lower Manhattan, The Mount Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side, Mount Sinai Morningside on the Upper West Side, Mount Sinai Brooklyn, and Mount Sinai South Nassau on Long Island.
Hospital staff did not say how many patients each site will be able to treat at a time.
New York City remains the epicenter of the US coronavirus outbreak, with 33,786 cases and 672 deaths reported as of Sunday morning.
Coronavirus killed 161 people – one person per every 8.9 minutes – in the 24 hour span since Saturday morning, according to the latest data from City Hall.
Queens, the largest borough, has been the hardest-hit by number of cases, hitting five-digits Sunday with 10,373.
It’s trailed by Brooklyn with 8,451, The Bronx with 6,145, Manhattan with 5,438 and Staten Island with 1,866.
The Central Park site is located near Columbus Circle, yards from the Mount Sinai West emergency room on W 59th Street
There are also plans in place to put up tents outside Mount Sinai Beth Israel in Lower Manhattan, The Mount Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side, Mount Sinai Morningside on the Upper West Side, Mount Sinai Brooklyn, and Mount Sinai South Nassau on Long Island
Hospital staff did not say how many patients each site will be able to treat at a time
Pedestrians walk through Central Park on Sunday morning as construction at the triage site got underway
The US currently leads the world in coronavirus infections with 131,824 reported as of Sunday morning
The coronavirus death toll in America topped 2,300 on Sunday, more than double the number reported two days earlier
Governor Andrew Cuomo revealed the grim new numbers in a press conference on Sunday where he ordered New York’s non-essential workers to stay in place for another two weeks and insisted that President Donald Trump’s new travel restrictions change nothing for the Empire State.
Cuomo said that he supports the president’s decision to issue a travel advisory for New York but assured residents that: ‘This is not a lockdown.’
Gov Andrew Cuomo ordered New York’s non-essential workers to stay in place for another two weeks during a press conference on Sunday (pictured)
Trump had initially considered ordering a quarantine for the coronavirus hotspots of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, but abandoned that idea Saturday night.
The president announced in a tweet that the quarantine would not go ahead and a travel advisory would be issued instead. The travel advisory urges residents of the tri-state area to immediately avoid any nonessential travel for two weeks.
‘I know we feel under attack. Yes, New York is the epicenter and these are different times and many people are frightened,’ Cuomo said, referring to the travel advisory and Rhode Island’s dramatic tactics of pulling over drivers with New York plates.
‘But look this is New York, we have made it through far greater things. We are going to be okay. We specialize in stamina in strength and instability. We are strong, we have endurance and we have stability.
‘We know what we’re doing. We have a plan and any obstacle that we come across we will handle it,’ Cuomo said, adding that ‘there is no state in the nation that is better prepared’ than New York.
‘New York is going to have what it needs and no one is going to attack New York unfairly and no one is going to deprive New York of what it needs.’
The governor then gave a run-down of the state’s number of confirmed cases. He said health officials conducted 16,000 tests Saturday night, bringing the total tests to 172,000, the most in the US.
The governor said the state now has more than 59,000 confirmed coronavirus cases with 8,000 hospitalized and 2,000 people in ICUs.
‘I don’t think you look at those numbers and conclude that nothing less than thousands of people will pass away,’ Cuomo said.
Cuomo said the US Navy hospital ship, the Comfort, will be in New York on Monday. The ship will provide an additional 1,000 hospital beds as hospitals are predicted to become overwhelmed within the next week.
New York currently nearly half of the nation’s 131,824 cases and 2,336 deaths.