New York's Central Park now coronavirus field hospital as virus rips through city
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A field hospital is being erected in New York City’s famed Central Park to help meet the demand of extra hospital beds during the coronavirus outbreak that has ripped through the city.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Mt. Sini Hospital said in a statement obtained by Fox News that it is partnering with Samaritan’ Purse and other government agencies and will be located in the East Meadow. It will enable doctors to “provide care for patients seriously ill with COVID-19.”
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The hospital is expected to be running by Tuesday, the report said. The makeshift hospital will have 68 beds, Fox5NY.com reported. The report said that Samaritan’s Purse, the nondenominational evangelical Christian organization, has been operating a similar facility in Cremona, Italy. The organization is led by Franklin Graham, the son of the late televangelist Billy Graham, the New York Post reported.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A Samaritan's Purse crew works on building an emergency field hospital equipped with a respiratory unit in New York's Central Park across from the Mount Sinai Hospital, Sunday, March 29, 2020. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
Photographs from Central Park show large white tents erected on the field.
The team of 70 doctors will be led by Dr. Elliott Tenpenny, who worked in disaster areas like Syria and West Africa during an Ebola outbreak.
“This is honestly the most improbable place we’re ever been,” he told the Post. “I never would have guessed we’d come to New York City with something like this. But New York never thought it would be dealing with a pandemic, either.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}New York City remains the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. There have been 776 deaths in New York City as of late Sunday. The virus has been challenging for public health officials because it can spread easily, even from those with no apparent symptoms.