Metro

De Blasio says US Open coronavirus hospital will quickly be at ‘full capacity’

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Published March 31, 2020
Updated March 31, 2020, 4:01 p.m. ET
USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center at Flushing Meadows
Rashid Umar Abbasi

The city’s latest planned makeshift hospital — at the Queens stadium that houses the US Open tennis tournament — will quickly be at “full capacity” after it starts taking coronavirus patients next week, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday.

Hizzoner spoke at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, which will offer the city’s struggling hospitals an additional 350 beds when it’s up and running.

“This facility will be set up rapidly,” de Blasio said. “This place will be a lifesaving place.”
Dr. Eric Wei, vice president of the city’s Health + Hospitals, said of the Big Apple’s medical centers, “The indicators I’m looking at are flashing red.
“I’m seeing things I could never have imagined,” he said.
“Some of the positive tests that were coming back were from those that we least expected it. … Some people with just diarrhea and upset stomach. … We had traumas come in, so people who got hit by cars, people who got beat up on the street. We put them in the CT scanner … [and saw] pneumonia that’s consistent for COVID-19.
“We’re operating under the understanding that anybody could have COVID at this point, any patient we see,” Wei said.
He said the “surging” of patients is “well beyond” the capacity of the system’s current number of intensive care units.
“So this space is exactly what we need,” Wei said, referring to the covered tennis courts.
The mayor said the makeshift hospital would start taking patients from the especially hard-hit Elmhurst Hospital in Queens next week, although the entire build-out would take about three weeks.

The beds were scheduled to be set up around the courts, with construction of the pop-up hospital starting Tuesday.

“It’s going to help take the pressure off of Elmhurst — we all know for a variety of reasons Elmhurst has been the place that has borne the brunt,” de Blasio said of the hospital.

“Starting next week, this facility will be able to take people from Elmhurst — not folks who need ICU care but other coronavirus patients, bring them over here, remove that pressure immediately.”

He said the city currently has 20,000 staffed hospital beds — and “We now need to triple that number.”