This browser does not support the Video element.
New York adding hospital beds
The USTA National Tennis Center in Queens will house a temporary hospital. In the meantime, the USNS Comfort hospital ship and the field hospital at the Javits Center have begun taking patients. Both Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio said that a lot more needs to be done.
NEW YORK - The number of deaths in New York from the coronavirus outbreak has climbed quickly. Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday said that the number of deaths due to coronavirus had jumped to 1,550. Most of those deaths have been in New York City, which reported Tuesday afternoon that 1,096 people have died.
Most of the deaths have occurred in just the past few days. Cuomo said the ultimate number of COVID-19-related deaths will be staggering, then added: "To me, we're beyond staggering already."
New York recorded 9,298 new cases, bringing the state's total to 75,795. More than 10,929 people have been hospitalized with more than 2,700 people under intensive care.
New York is bracing for an escalation in hospitalizations and deaths in April as the outbreak's projected "apex" closes in.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city is trying to triple its number of hospital beds before the apex comes. He visited the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park where a mobile hospital of 350 beds will be built. Those beds will help take the strain off Elmhurst Hospital, which has been inundated by COVID-19 patients.
USNS Comfort, escorted by Coast Guard, NYPD and FDNY boats, arrives in New York City, March 30, 2020. (U.S. Coast Guard)
The Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort, which docked in New York City on Monday, has 1,000 beds that will be used as a "relief valve" to treat non-coronavirus patients while the city's increasingly stressed hospitals handle people with COVID-19, Cuomo said.
A mobile hospital that the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Guard, and FEMA set up at the Javits Center in Manhattan has begun to take in non-ICU patients. The White House has approve the construction of several more temporary hospitals.
De Blasio said he has asked the military to send more doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists to New York but is waiting for an answer from the White House.
In a glimmer of good news, Cuomo said that 4,975 patients had been discharged from New York hospitals after being treated with 771 going home on Monday alone.
This browser does not support the Video element.
Gov. Cuomo gives coronavirus update
Gov. Cuomo announced on Tuesday that the number of coronavirus deaths in New York had jumped to more than 1,500.