Over the weekend, approvals came in from the federal government for four temporary hospitals to be built in New York State. This is in addition to the 1,000 floating bed hospital, the USNS Comfort, that is going to arrive in New York City harbor sometime in April.
On Saturday, Governor Cuomo visited all four sites which are are: SUNY Stony Brook, SUNY Westbury, Westchester County Center and Jacob K. Javits Center. FEMA will build the four 250-bed federal hospitals within the Javits Center that will be “fully staffed and fully equipped” according to Governor Cuomo. In addition, New York State has leased a 600-bed capacity nursing home facility in Brooklyn to convert into a temporary hospital.
On CNN Sunday night, Governor Cuomo said to Wolf Blitzer that the Javits Center is “one of the largest convention centers in the country, and we’ve cleared those sites. I cut all the red tape. I said to the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA, as soon as you can get here, we are ready to go. We cleared the buildings. I asked them to come tomorrow morning. I’m ready. I want to get up as many new hospital beds as possible, because at the current rate, Wolf, we don’t have half enough hospital beds. We don’t have a third enough ICU beds, intensive care unit beds, with ventilators. So we need tremendous capacity added immediately.”
Next, read about the Top 10 Secrets of the Javits Center.
