The governors of New York and California are making urgent appeals for help.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said his state needs one million more workers to tackle the crisis. “I am asking healthcare professionals across the country,” he pleaded. “If you don’t have a healthcare crisis in your community please come help us in New York now. We need relief. And we will return the favor.”
Earlier, some relief arrived in New York City in the form of the U.S. naval hospital ship Comfort. Onboard are 1,000 beds and more than 1,100 medical personnel ready to treat patients who are not fighting the coronavirus.
The vessel is the latest temporary hospital to deal with overcrowding in the city’s medical centers.
New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio said, “I want you to understand the sheer magnitude of the plan. We have to triple our hospital bed capacity in NYC by May.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that one city hospital is asking doctors to think “more critically” about which patients get ventilators.
Inside one of New York’s intensive care units, a nurse practitioner Elyse Isopo showed the harsh reality. “It’s as bad as I’ve ever seen anything before,” she said. “These are patients that are the sickest I’ve ever seen.”
This comes as officials brace for the days ahead in emerging hotspots across the country, like in New Orleans, Detroit and Miami.
In California, the Los Angeles Convention Center will be used for the sick. But the governor says that along with equipment, the state also urgently needs more healthcare staff as coronavirus-related hospitalizations doubled in the past four days.
California Governor Gavin Newsom explained, “We’re in the middle of this. We believe very strongly that the stay at home order has helped advance our efforts in reducing the stress on the system.”
Three out of four Americans are under stay at home orders Wednesday morning. That’s more than 250 million people. President Trump says it’s unlikely he’ll enact them nationwide. He said, “We have talked about it. It was something that was very unwieldy and very tough to enforce and something we didn’t want to do.”
State leaders are once again asking the Trump administration for more critical supplies and test kits, saying it’s unfair to compete with others domestically and internationally for what they need.
Illinois Governor J.b. Pritzker said, “I can’t emphasize enough how much we need the federal government to step up and amplify the size of their deliveries to Illinois and, frankly, across the nation.”
More than three-quarters of Americans were under stay at home orders as of Tuesday morning.
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