Tents waiting for the sick in Central Park, others erected in front of hospitals, the Manhattan conference center converted into a hospital soon followed by the sports center in Flushing Meadows: New York is undergoing a metamorphosis to be able to treat tens of thousands of patients with coronavirus.
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A dozen tents erected in Central Park since Sunday were preparing for Tuesday to welcome up to 70 patients sick with the virus from nearby Mount Sinai hospital.
“We see films like + Contagion + and we think it will never happen, so seeing it for real is really surreal,” says Joanne Dunbar, 57, who came to witness the transformation of this emblematic place.
After eight days of work carried out by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the Javits Center conference center in Manhattan is now operational, with nearly 3,000 beds for patients without the coronavirus, for allow hospitals to focus on the epidemic.
A few streets further on, the imposing white silhouette of the military hospital ship Comfort, which arrived Monday with a capacity of 1000 beds, stands out in the middle of the skyscrapers.
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Other sites have been identified across America’s first metropolis to serve as a hospital, including one of the buildings at the Flushing Meadows tennis complex in the Queens neighborhood, as well as hotels to be able to isolate infected people, but not seriously ill.
The economic capital of the United States and the state of New York in general, which had nearly 76,000 cases and 1,550 dead on Tuesday by midday, is racing against time to increase its hospital capacity before the peak of the epidemic, expected within “seven to 21 days”, according to Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said Tuesday that his brother, a CNN presenter, was also infected.
He called on New Yorkers to “calibrate their expectations so that they are not disappointed each day when they wake up to see the situation worsen.
“We have about 20,000 beds across New York City,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio. “We hope that all will be transformed into intensive care beds for Covid-19 patients”.
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Palpable concern
“New Yorkers are in a difficult situation, and we are trying to do the best to open places in order to alleviate the increase in the number of cases”, underlined on CNN the doctor Anthony Fauci, expert in infectious diseases who advises Donald Trump on this crisis.
In this metropolis which has never been so deserted and silent, where now resonates in the evening, as in many European cities, applause saluting the nursing staff, the concern is more and more palpable.
Masks are everywhere, and buildings have “never been cleaned so much,” said Joel Quesada, a cleaner at a Manhattan building complex, where he has gone from 40 to 55 hours per week.
Larry Grossman, director of a supermarket, says he has lost in recent days 14 of his 75 employees, “either sick or afraid to come to work”, despite the protective partitions installed at each checkout.
If New York is more than ever the epicenter of the epidemic, with more than half of American cases, the entire world power now lives in concern with 175,000 cases recorded for 3,415 dead, a number of deaths now more important than the official Chinese record.
More than three in four Americans are now under strict containment orders. Most large cities are affected, and outbreaks that have appeared in recent days in Chicago or New Orleans are worsening.
Even rural states, like Montana, which have very few confirmed cases, are calling for masks and testing kits from the federal government.
The Deputy Minister of Health, Brett Giroir, however confirmed on Tuesday that the United States was for the moment obliged to limit the tests to “those who really need it”, namely the seriously ill and the most vulnerable people. .
The discourse of the authorities on the wearing of the mask, initially recommended only for the people in direct contact with the sick, vulnerable people or presenting themselves symptoms, is also in the process of evolving.
The White House Crisis Staff “is actively discussing it,” said Dr Fauci. “As soon as we have enough masks, we will seriously think about broadening its recommendations for use”.
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