Coronavirus in N.Y.: 'Deluge' of Cases Begins Hitting Hospitals
Source: New York Times
March 20, 2020
Updated 7:01 p.m. ET
New York States long-feared surge of coronavirus cases has begun, thrusting the medical system toward a crisis point.
In a startlingly quick ascent, officials reported on Friday that the state was closing in on 8,000 positive tests, about half the cases in the country. The number was 10 times higher than what was reported earlier in the week.
In the Bronx, doctors at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center say they have only a few remaining ventilators for patients who need them to breathe. In Brooklyn, doctors at Kings County Hospital Center say they are so low on supplies that they are reusing masks for up to a week, slathering them with hand sanitizer between shifts.
Some of the jump in New Yorks cases can be traced to significantly increased testing, which the state began this week. But the escalation, and the response, could offer other states a glimpse of what might be in store if the virus continues to spread. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Friday urged residents to stay indoors and ordered nonessential businesses to keep workers home.
State officials have projected that the number of coronavirus cases in New York will peak in early May. Both the governor and Mayor Bill de Blasio have used wartime metaphors and analogies to paint a grim picture of what to expect. Officials have said the state would need to double its available hospital beds to 100,000 and could be short as many as 25,000 ventilators.
As it prepares for the worst-case projections, the state is asking retired health care workers to volunteer to help. The city is considering trying to turn the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan into a makeshift hospital.
The most striking part is the speed with which it has ramped up, said Ben McVane, an emergency room doctor at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens. It went from a small trickle of patients to a deluge of patients in our departments.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/nyregion/ny-coronavirus-hospitals.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
The projections for New York City over the next week:
Link to tweet
certainot
(9,090 posts)Igel
(35,196 posts)paleotn
(17,781 posts)Kind of catchy!
certainot
(9,090 posts)team and through ignorance and dittoheaded shitheadedness and denial and plans to use an event like this to interfere with the elections, prevented the actions, even in helping china and other countries, that would have slowed the spread in other countries, and prepared our own responders
it is the trump virus, spread by shitheadedness at the top, not by a butcher in wuhan
Strelnikov_
(7,772 posts)Rebl2
(13,309 posts)iluvtennis
(19,757 posts)Warpy
(110,909 posts)and doctors to intubate the patients and nurses and respiratory therapists to monitor them as closely as they'll need to be monitored? HELL NO. He's like all stupid businessmen who think machines just run themselves. and the people on them rise up completely cured three days later.
Medicine is and always has been labor intensive and hospital CEOs have cut labor to the bone, difficult in good times and utterly ruinous now.