Late March, New York:
New York City’s coronavirus outbreak is already overwhelming hospitals
In the US, the focus of the coronavirus outbreak last week shifted from the West Coast to New York City. As of 30 March, the city of 8.6 million people had 38,087 confirmed cases, which account for more than a quarter of cases in the US, and 914 people had died of covid-19.
In one 24-hour period last week, 2000 people were hospitalised in the city. Most of the positive covid-19 test results have been clustered in the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn.
At a press conference on 25 March, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio said these are “numbers I can barely even comprehend… number[s] that would have been unimaginable just a couple of weeks ago”.
In Queens, hospitals and emergency rooms have been flooded with critically ill covid-19 patients struggling to breathe. “It’s inconceivable. Everything we know about medicine is out the window,” says Lisa Epstein, a nurse at New York-Presbyterian Queens, who is working in the hospital’s emergency room.
https://www.newscientist.com/article...ing-hospitals/