‘It’s getting worse,’ Mayor de Blasio says.
New York City’s health care system is straining under the deluge of coronavirus cases, and it is “getting worse” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Sunday morning.
“April is going to be worse than March,” the mayor said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And I fear May will be worse than April.”
Mr. de Blasio was blunt when speaking about President Trump’s response to the crisis, saying, “If the president does not act, people will die who could have lived otherwise.”
When asked what he wanted the military to do immediately, the mayor responded: “All military personnel who are medically trained should be sent to places where this crisis is deep, like New York, right now.”
He continued: “If there are ventilators being produced anywhere in the country, we need to get them to New York. Not weeks from now or months from now, in the next 10 days.
More than 8,000 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in New York City, and more than 1,000 are hospitalized for it, according to city numbers. At least 60 people have died.
According to a New York Times tally, there have been 80 deaths statewide linked to the coronavirus.
A federal inmate in Brooklyn tests positive for the virus.
An inmate at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn tested positive on Saturday for the coronavirus, according to a spokesperson for the federal Bureau of Prisons. It is the first known case involving an inmate in the federal prison system.
The inmate arrived at the jail on Monday, the agency said. Three days later, he complained of chest pains and was taken to an outside hospital and tested for the virus. He returned to the Brooklyn facility the next day and was placed in isolation.
On Saturday, the test came back positive.
Prison workers were told to clean the area that held the inmate while he was at the hospital, but they refused because they lacked protective gear, according to a Bureau of Prisons employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
It was not clear if outside cleaners were brought in to do the job.
The prison agency did not say whether staff members or other inmates would be quarantined, but the employee said that the sick inmate had been held with other inmates during the week and that the agency has since quarantined those inmates.
Workers were told they would be notified if they must isolate themselves, the employee said.
The Metropolitan Detention Center became the focus of media coverage last year after inmates were locked in freezing cells during a heat and power failure.
The New York Times spoke with more than a dozen workers in the Bureau of Prisons last week who said the facility and other prisons were ill-prepared for a coronavirus outbreak. The Brooklyn jail, like many others, does not have enough hand sanitizer or soap, according to two Bureau of Prisons employees.
The Bureau of Prisons has said it is limiting transfers of inmates, but two prison employees said the Brooklyn facility received an influx of new inmates on Friday. At least some workers, they said, refused to process the inmates.
Javits Center and three other sites are being eyed for temporary hospitals.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Saturday that he expected as many as 2,000 patients who test positive for the virus to receive care at the sprawling, glass complex in Manhattan, known for hosting large scale events like New York Comic Con.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is also seriously looking at other locations including two at State University of New York campuses on Long Island, and at the Westchester Convention Center. Doctors have said the number of hospital beds available will dwindle as cases of the virus soar.
New York hospitals have continued to see a sharp increase in Covid-19 cases, surpassing 10,000 as of Saturday. The relentless spike is thrusting the medical system toward a crisis point, officials have said.
Disaster Declaration gives New York access to billions in aid.
The Trump administration issued a Major Disaster Declaration for the state on Friday, meaning more federal aid is coming to New York as cases of coronavirus show no sign of abating.
As of Saturday, 10,356 New York State residents had tested positive for the virus. With 6 percent of the U.S. population, the state now accounts for nearly half of the cases in the country, as tallied by The New York Times.
The designation by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was announced by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York on Friday night, gives New York access to billions of dollars in aid from the Disaster Relief Fund.
New York City’s Health Department moves to curtail testing as pandemic overwhelms hospitals.
Weeks after demanding that the federal government send more coronavirus test kits to New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the public health system would soon be conducting 5,000 tests a day.
Legions of anxious New Yorkers responded by lining up at hospitals, including about 100 outside the emergency room at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens.
But by late Friday, the city’s Department of Health seemed to reverse course: It moved to curtail widespread testing, saying it was undermining the broader strategy to stop the virus’s spread.
“Outpatient testing must not be encouraged, promoted or advertised,” the Health Department said in an advisory. Facilities were asked to “immediately stop testing non-hospitalized patients” for the virus unless medically necessary.
City officials said they were worried the testing centers were drawing sick people out from isolation in their homes. To perform each test, health care workers must use fresh protective gear, including masks, which are already in short supply.
The Health Department also discouraged hospitals from testing asymptomatic health care workers, alarming some doctors who believe it could lead to increased transmission within hospitals.
Reporting was contributed by Annie Correal, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Joseph Goldstein, J. David Goodman, Danielle Ivory, Azi Paybarah, Brian Rosenthal, Michael Rothfeld, Edgar Sandoval, Tracey Tully and Neil Vigdor.
