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Coronavirus in New York: Patients arrive very seriously ill

DThe hospital beds are not lined up side by side. In the overcrowded emergency rooms coughs from all corners. Overworked doctors, nurses and carers have to get by with one face mask per day. And the vital ventilators are also becoming fewer and fewer.

The hospitals in New York City are almost like those in Italy, where thousands have died from the virus in the past few weeks. The metropolis is the center of the corona crisis in the USA. 56 percent of the confirmed coronavirus cases in the country have been found in the New York area, said US corona commissioner Deborah Birx on Tuesday in the White House.

To prevent the virus from spreading even faster to the whole country, everyone who recently visited the metropolis should go into isolation at home for 14 days.

The governor speaks of war-like conditions

As of Tuesday (local time), almost 14,800 people in New York City had been infected with the virus that causes the lung disease Covid-19 – and that’s just the number confirmed after tests. More than 2,200 had to be hospitalized, around 500 of which were treated in the intensive care unit.

The death toll rose by Tuesday according to Johns Hopkins University on 192, still far from the figures from Italy, but doctors and leading politicians such as Governor Andrew Cuomo are already talking about war-like conditions, as they became known two weeks ago from clinics in Bergamo and elsewhere.

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With developments in Italy in mind, Cuomo is certain that things will get worse in the next few days – and in a dramatic way. Especially because the promised aid from the federal government in Washington is still a long way off.

03/22/2020, USA, New York: Tourists taking photos in empty Times Square.  Photo: Marcus Santos / ZUMA Wire / dpa +++ dpa-Bildfunk +++ – –

Tourists take photos in empty Times Square

Source: dpa

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The infection rate in New York City is already five times higher than in any other part of the country. The director of the National Institute for Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, warned on Tuesday that one in 1,000 people who left New York was also infected and thus the virus would be carried across the country.

Now the patients arrive seriously ill

Until recently, patients had come to hospitals with relatively mild symptoms, said Jolion McGreevy, head of the emergency department at Mount Sinai Hospital. But that has changed within the last week.

In the meantime, a great many seriously ill people have to be treated. “We knew it was coming,” said McGreevy, referring to Italy. But many experts are surprised that it all happened so quickly. “A week ago it still seemed laughable that things could turn out like in Italy. Not today, ”wrote Craig Smith, chief surgeon of the Columbia University to colleagues.

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Governor Cuomo reckons that around 40,000 patients could need intensive care treatment within the next two weeks, for which there are just 3,000 beds in the entire state of New York. In a corona forecast there was talk of a freight train that could roll over the USA, said Cuomo. “Now we see a high-speed train coming towards us.”

Cuomo condemned statements by President Donald Trump that Americans should be ready to go back to work in two weeks so that the economy could pick up again. This would de facto sacrifice the old and the sick. “It’s not the American way,” said Cuomo.

He also criticized the fact that Trump’s government had only sent 400 of the much-needed ventilators. “What do I do with 400 ventilators, whom I need 30,000?”

The same symptoms almost everywhere

Dr. Craig Spencer, Senior Emergency Physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center, described in a tweet on Tuesday a “cough concert” in his emergency room. Almost every patient has the same symptoms no matter how old they are: a persistent dry cough, shortness of breath and a fever.

“You’re afraid to take off your mask. It is the only thing that protects you, ”wrote Spencerwho survived an Ebola infection in 2014.

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Like him, many other doctors and nurses are also afraid of infection. The New York Presbyterian Hospital currently uses around 40,000 face masks per day – ten times as many as normal. That’s why the masks were rationed – on one per employee per day, said Spencer.

New York Mayor Bill De Blasio said 2.2 million masks had been delivered to New York hospitals on Monday and more were on the way. “If we don’t have any more, it would be like sending a soldier to war where everyone has armor and we have no armor,” says Joseph Habboushe, emergency physician at NYU Langone Medical Center.

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Eric Cioe-Pena of health care provider Northwell Health also used a similar choice of words: “We went into battle,” he said. After every shift in the hospital, he tries to decontaminate everything: his cell phone, his work clothes, but also his private clothes.

Outsourcing the beds provides a little relief

In order to prepare for the expected onslaught of the seriously ill, hospitals are trying to outsource beds. A convention center on the Hudson River in Manhattan is being converted into a clinic with 1,000 beds, a Navy clinic ship, the “USNS Comfort”, is expected in New York Harbor in two weeks with space for a further 1,000 beds. However, coronavirus patients should not be treated there, but others in order to relieve the clinics.

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Emergency physician Habboushe from NYU Langone Medical Center is already afraid of such decisions as the colleagues in Bergamo, for example, have already had to make: Which patients can I treat immediately and which have to wait for their treatment – and therefore possibly die. It’s hard to imagine, said Habboushe. But now it is a real scenario. “And that breaks my heart.”

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