Currents News Staff
Some relief has arrived in New York City in the form of the U.S. naval hospital ship Comfort.
Onboard, 1,000 beds and more than 1,100 medical personnel are ready to treat patients who are not fighting the coronavirus. The vessel is the latest temporary hospital to deal with overcrowding in the city’s medical centers.
“I want you to understand the sheer magnitude of the plan,” said New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio. “We have to triple our hospital bed capacity in New York City by May.
“I am asking healthcare professionals across the country: If you don’t have a healthcare crisis in your community, please come help us in New York now,” added Governor Andrew Cuomo. “We need relief, and we will return the favor.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that one city hospital is asking doctors to think “more critically” about which patients get ventilators. Inside of New York’s North Shore University Hospital intensive care unit, nurse practitioner Elyse Isopo showed the harsh reality.
“It’s as bad as I’ve ever seen anything before,” she said. “These are patients that are the sickest I’ve ever seen.”
This comes as officials brace for the days ahead in emerging hotspots across the country, like in New Orleans, Detroit and Miami.
Three out of four Americans are under stay at home orders as of March 31 — that’s more than 250 million people.
President Donald Trump says it’s unlikely he’ll enact them nationwide.
“We have talked about it,” he said. “It was something that was very unwieldy and very tough to enforce, and something we didn’t want to do.