Triage tents set up in makeshift Central Park field hospital as NYC coronavirus death toll nears 700 – The Sun

LARGE white triage tents now dominate part of Central Park, where they have been urgently set up to help New York City cope with coronavirus patients.

With the city’s death toll swelling to 700, evangelical Christian organization Samaritan’s Purse says its makeshift hospital is expected to open on Tuesday.

Samaritan's Purse has put up the emergency field hospital across Fifth Avenue from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City to provide care for patients seriously ill with Covid-19.

It said on its website that "a large disaster assistance response team, including doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel will soon be on the ground as well.

"Coronavirus patients will be coming to us from the Mt. Sinai Health System, and the first priority is to move patients from Mt. Sinai Brooklyn and Mt. Sinai Queens.

"Today volunteers from local churches are helping our staff set up the 68-bed respiratory care unit, which was prepared especially for this response to provide much needed support and to help save lives during the coronavirus pandemic."

Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse, said: “People are dying from the coronavirus, hospitals are out of beds, and the medical staff are overwhelmed.

“We are deploying our emergency field hospital to New York to help carry this burden.

"This is what Samaritan’s Purse doe – we respond in the middle of crises to help people in Jesus’ Name. Please pray for our teams and for everyone around the world affected by the virus.”

America is now reporting more than 140,000 active coronavirus cases—the highest total in the world.

New York City is at the global epicenter for this terrible disease, which has already killed more than 2,400 people across the country.

The organisation said: "The situation in the city is dire, with the death total increasing daily.

"Earlier this week, a makeshift morgue was set up outside of a Manhattan hospital, the first of what is expected to come at other local hospitals as the crisis continues to escalate.

"Medical facilities are running out of beds in their intensive care units, as about 20 per cent of all people who test positive in New York City are requiring hospitalization.

"Ventilators and critical medical equipment are also in short supply.

"About 50 per cent of all cases in the US are coming from the state of New York, with the New York City metro area alone reporting more than 600 deaths and nearly 34,000 cases across its five boroughs."

Samaritan’s Purse is also responding to the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy, the epicenter of the outbreak in Europe.

It has another 68-bed Emergency Field Hospital set up in Cremona, outside of Milan.

The facility, which opened on March 20, is set up in the Cremona Hospital parking lot in order to treat an overflow of coronavirus patients.

When Samaritan's Purse posted about its work in NYC on its Facebook page, it received a flurry of support.

Sharon Kirton commented: "You are amazing.Thank God for Samaritans Purse."

But, Donna DeBruyne asked: "Could you give us an idea of numbers of people you are actually testing and treating for the Covid-19 virus?

"Are you having an overflow problem with too many sick people, and those tent hospitals are really needed?"

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says the state's coronavirus death toll is nearing 1,000.

It accounts for more than 40 per cent of coronavirus deaths in America.

The number of disease-related deaths in the state, the vast majority in New York City, jumped from 728 to 965 in the last 24 hours.

Figures released Sunday morning showed 678 coronavirus deaths in the city, which continues to be the epicenter of the pandemic in the US.

The number of patients being discharged at New York state's hospitals after they've been treated for the coronavirus has increased daily to a high of 845 on Saturday, Cuomo said.

In all, more than 3,500 people have been discharged.

As of Sunday, more than 8,500 people remain hospitalized across the state because of the disease, including more than 2,000 in intensive care. In New York City, about 20 per cent of coronavirus cases have led to hospitalizations.

Those totals are continuing to spike.

But Cuomo said they're not multiplying nearly as quickly as they were last week.

From March 16-19, the number of hospitalizations in the state doubled every two days.

Now it's taking about six days for the number to double.

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