Westchester County Center Named Coronavirus Field Hospital: Cuomo

WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NY — The Army Corps of Engineers has recommended four initial sites in New York for temporary hospitals to deal with a coming surge of patients infected with new coronavirus — the Westchester County Center, the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, and locations at SUNY Stony Brook and SUNY Old Westbury.

Over the past days, an inspection team led by the Army Corps of Engineers, and including state officials from the Office of General Services, the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York, the Department of Health and the New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs, visited more than a dozen sites to review for temporary hospital use, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in an afternoon news briefing. He'll give them the final list today.

There are now about 50,000 hospital beds in New York, and public health officials want a minimum of 75,000 beds to deal with the surge.

"We told the hospitals we're going to be ending elective surgeries. We are now working with hospitals to reconfigure the space in the hospital to get more beds and to find more staff to manage those beds," Cuomo said. "We're working on building new beds. We're going to go out and review a number of sites today ... That would give us a regional distribution and a real capacity if we can get them up quickly enough."

When the decision is finalized, the Army Corps is expected to immediately begin work to construct the temporary hospitals. The governor is also requesting FEMA designate four field hospitals with 250 beds each for the state, intended for use in the Javits Center in addition to the temporary hospital to be constructed by the Army Corps.

Later in the day, Senators Chuck Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand called on FEMA and the Army Corps to finish a standard hospital room design and move forward with modifying or retrofitting New York facilities for use as hospitals, according to a release.

Cuomo also announced that the state will send 1 million N95 masks — which can provide extra protection from COVID-19 — to New York City starting Saturday.

There are 10,356 confirmed cases in the state, Cuomo said, including 1,300 in Westchester. The Westchester cases rose from 798 on Thursday. Cuomo credited the virus containment area instituted in New Rochelle for helping to slow the rate of increase in Westchester.

"The numbers would suggest that that has been helpful. So I feel good about that," he said.

More than 45,000 people have been tested in New York City. In fact, that's more tests per capita than China and South Korea, Cuomo said. "The more tests you take, the more positives you find," he said.

The goal is to find more cases to help get a handle on the virus' spread, Cuomo said. Doctors estimate between 7.8 million and 15.6 million New Yorkers will be infected by the virus by the time it runs its course, he said.

Cuomo on Friday issued a sweeping "stay-at-home" order designed to limit the virus' spread.