Central Brooklyn Hospital's Coronavirus Struggle Under Spotlight

PROSPECT LEFFERTS GARDENS, BROOKLYN — Makeshift protective barriers out of plastic bags. A hospital literally falling apart as the coronavirus ravages its patients, who are mostly people of color. Looming health care cuts that could deepen the crisis. An unfulfilled request for a testing machine that a wealthier hospital managed to obtain.

That's the portrait painted by a one-two punch of reports about conditions at University Hospital of Brooklyn by the New York Times and state Sen. Zellnor Myrie.

Myrie, jumping off the Times' front page weekend story, didn't mince words.

"Central Brooklyn has been left to die during the COVID-19 pandemic," he wrote in a Medium post.

The two reports follow increasing chatter about struggles in Central Brooklyn hospitals. The heads of three hospital systems — Kings County Hospital, One Brooklyn Health System and Downstate University Hospital Brooklyn — serving the community last week said hundreds of patients remain on ventilators.

Then the New York Times published an in-depth story looking inside University Hospital of Brooklyn. The story recounted how staff set up protective barriers out of tarps and duct tape, wore plastic bags as booties and overall struggled to contend with a crumbling facility.

Staff and administrators even set up a GoFundMe for personal protective equipment.

Myrie tied the woes to state budget cuts and Tuesday called for legislation to protect disproportionately affected communities from further cuts.

The hospital sits in the 11203 zip code, which as of Monday had 1,606 confirmed coronavirus cases — the 24th-most out of city codes, according to health department data.

Another zip code — 11226 — the hospital serves had 1,628 cases — the 20th-most out of city zip codes.

Myrie also called for an investigation into the hospital's unfulfilled request for a Cobas 6800 machine, which can perform 1,440 coronavirus tests in a day. He wrote hospital officials — with backing of himself and other Brooklyn elected officials — requested the high-volume, rapid-testing machine six weeks ago.

The hospital never received it. Meanwhile, NewYork-Presbyterian managed to receive at least one such machine, he wrote.

He called himself "alarmed at what appears to be real-time discrimination during this crisis" and wrote a probe could tell if it was a decision made by the CDC, FDA or the machine's vendor.

"We do not know how else they were distributed, who made the distribution decision, or why," he wrote. "But here is what we do know: in one of the deadliest counties in the deadliest city on the planet, a hospital serving black and brown patients has not received a testing machine they requested six weeks ago."

Myrie set up a petition calling for an investigation.

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