St. John the Divine Cathedral Will Not Be Coronavirus Hospital

MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, NY – The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine will no longer be the home to an emergency hospital for new coronavirus patients staffed by personnel from nearby Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital, the cathedral announced on Thursday.

"Our commitment to Mount Sinai and to the city, our longtime partners, stands firm, and we will do whatever is in our power to aid the medical workers heroically putting themselves on the front line to help the sick," the cathedral said in a post on Twitter.

The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue, known as the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, was set to turn its massive interior and underground crypto into an emergency hospital staffed by personnel fromMount Sinai, the New York Times first reported.

In the original plan, patients could arrive at the cathedral, which would be set up with nine climate-controlled medical tents, as early as the end of the week, church leaders told the Times.

The announcement comes as Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday New York broke its new coronavirus death toll record for the third day in a row with 799 lives lost in just 24 hours. The increase in deaths highlights the need for more unconventional locations for emergency medical services.

The 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 will also soon become emergency medical facilities, adding to an emergency hospital that opened at the Javits Center in Manhattan, Cuomo said.

An emergency hospital tent was also built in Central Park, along with similar triage tents at many of Mount Sinai's hospitals across the five boroughs.

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