NYC Gets 4 More Emergency Facilities In Coronavirus Fight: Cuomo

NEW YORK, NY — Four more sites in New York City will turn into emergency medical facilities to help fight the new coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Saturday.

Queen's Aqueduct Racetrack, the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook, the New York Expo Center in the Bronx and a facility at the College of Staten Island were each approved by President Donald Trump to become emergency medical facilities, adding to an emergency hospital that will open at the Javits Center in Manhattan next week, Cuomo said.

The four new sites, which will add 4,000 more beds to the city's healthcare system, will make it so there is an emergency facility in each of the five boroughs.

"This is going to be a big advantage," Cuomo said. "Every borough knows that they have a facility and that they are getting the same treatment that everyone else is getting."

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New York needs 140,000 hospital beds — almost triple the state's 53,000 beds — to fight the coronavirus, Cuomo has said. The state had more than 52,000 cases as of Saturday, 7,328 of which were hospitalized.

Cuomo did not say how soon the emergency facilities in the four outer boroughs would be set up, but the 1,000-bed emergency hospital at the Javits Center took just a week to set up. Cuomo said the Javits Center hospital will open on Monday.

The governor also announced that another 695 beds would be added to the healthcare system by bringing more beds into three existing sites.

The South Beach Psychiatric Center on Staten Island will get another 260, the Westchester Square Hospital in the Bronx will get 200 and the HealthAlliance Foundation in Ulster County will get 235 more beds, Cuomo said.

The Psychiatric Center and Westchester Square Hospital, along with SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, will also be turned into coronavirus-only hospitals, Cuomo added.

Experts have said that isolating COVID-19 patients will make it easier for staff — who are typically treating the coronavirus cases along with a variety of other patients — and will prevent the virus from spreading to other patients in the hospital, Cuomo said.

"It's smarter to keep the COVID-19 patients separate," Cuomo said. "We're going to isolate 600 beds."

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