Elmhurst Hospital, epicenter of the pandemic in Queens (Photo: QueensPost)
March 26, 2020 By Allie Griffin
More and more New Yorkers are dying from the coronavirus and the virus has killed more residents of Queens than any other borough.
Nearly 300 residents in New York City have died of COVID-19 complications and about a third of all deaths have been in Queens.
As of 8:45 this morning, 92 Queens residents out of 281 New York City residents have died, according to New York City data. Across the state, 100 people died in the past 24 hours, totaling 385 people lost since the pandemic began.
“This is really bad news. The number of deaths is increasing,” Governor Andrew Cuomo said at an Albany press conference today. “It’s bad news because people are dying and that’s the worst news you can have.”
Queens also has the highest number of cases of COVID-19 at 7,026 out of the City’s 21,873 total cases, according to the city data.
As of yesterday at 5:30 p.m., 1,363 patients were hospitalized in Queens for COVID-19 — that’s more than Staten Island’s total number of cases.
Elmhurst Hospital has been inundated with sick COVID-19 patients and is at the center of the crisis. In just 24 hours, the hospital lost 13 patients.
The number of deaths will continue to rise as critical patients remain on ventilators in the ICU, Cuomo said, and resources get stretched.
A doctor at Elmhurst Hospital said the staff members have been frantically searching for additional beds for the critically ill coronavirus patients.
“It’s just like a tidal wave,” said an Elmhurst Hospital doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The only beds we’ve been able to free up are people who have died.”
And at NewYork-Presbyterian Queens in Flushing, hospital staff have moved children undergoing treatment to free up room in the intensive care unit for coronavirus patients, the New York Post reported.
Cuomo said his office is working to distribute patients between hospitals in order to prevent individual hospitals from being overrun.
“Right now, the number of cases is highest in downstate New York,” Cuomo said. “So we’re working on a collaboration where we distribute the load between downstate hospitals and upstate hospitals.”
The state is also working to create an additional 1000-bed overflow facility in each borough, Cuomo said.
The hospital system across the state has 53,000 beds. At the height of the pandemic — which is expected to come in 14 to 21 days — New York may need as much as 140,000 hospital beds.
The governor acknowledged the challenge New Yorkers were facing as the state has become the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States.
“I don’t want to sugarcoat the situation — the situation is not easy,” Cuomo said. “But easy times don’t forge character, it’s the tough times that forge character and that’s what we’re looking at right now.”
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13 Comments
I lost my friend at New York Presbyterian in Flushing in 4 days. He had covid 1 9. He was strong and healthy.
Holliswood nursing home had over 50 patients die of the covid-19 virus ! This is unconscionable for the gross neglect of the administration and the thieving staff members!
Mark Tully, I don’t believe your theory makes sense if people are only now reporting symptoms bad enough to be hospitalized it would of happened in Queens months ago. Look at Wuhan, Italy, Seattle, etc. If infected individuals can be asymptotic for up to two weeks, we should of seen cases at least in January or they might have been misdiagnosed as having something other than COVID19. However, in Seattle we knew the American who infected the senior home came from visiting Wuhan. Italy supposedly was traced back to a runner who was also in Wuhan or China.
What’s lost in this pandemic was that there was the swine flu going back a century, SARS, Ebola, HIV, H1N1 etc. The 2009 swine flu appeared in the US but some evidence show it originated in a Mexico. Scientists that worked on the frontlines keep saying as long as humans are close to wildlife, it’s inevitable when a virus jumps into humans.
@Hateful Tully Relax yourself, my evil twin. Just because the disease came from China and became a crisis because of a corrupt regime that assigns Uighur women “husbands” while their real husbands are in “reeducation” camps doesn’t mean I hate regular Chinese people. I could have left months ago when it became a concern but I didn’t because of the risk of spreading the disease. I hope you don’t run for the hills now that everyone has figured out it’s a problem. Did you attend all the parades to prove how virtuous you are?
Jose – Yelp…Grow up. Elmhurst hospital has one of the best trauma units in the country. Elmhurst and Cook County are viewed by the industry peers and experts as state of the art.trauma centers. Do you rate your hospital visits on Yelp an advertising app utilized by spoiled millennials?
M. Tully, I agree the virus has been here for longer than expected. Tons of people have likely been exposed, got sick and if lucky, now have antibodies. That info won’t be known until an antibody test becomes available.
Was at the DMV in College Point in January. Stuck in a packed room for hours waiting with a friend to get the Real ID license. Good thing they’re closed now and the deadline has been pushed back a year.
HatefulTully,
Don’t be an Ahole. NO one is asking you to stay indoors forever. The order is to stay indoors RIGHT NOW so we don’t overwhelm the healthcare system. So we slow the spread of the virus here and across the country.
It’s not just the elderly who are dying. Young people are getting it too. Doctors and nurses are getting sick because they’re lacking proper equipment. If we don’t protect them, who’s going to save your ass when you need medical help?
Relax. You’ll get your chance to get infected too. Can’t stay indoors forever.
Here’s a post from a healthcare worker:
Your grandparents were called to fight in world wars. You’re being called to wash your hands & sit on the couch.
Don’t F this up!
Our NYC mayor projects that half of the city will be infected. All people can do is hope that they will not need to go to the hospital if they get sick. Its inevitable and I believe it is more than just washing hands and practicing social distancing. For ex, I hear people in other countries were told to wash fruit and vegetables (not being cooked right away) with soap and warm that you bring home in addition to packages even disinfecting mail! The ways of catching it are endless.
So it’s not a hoax by the democrats?
Elmhurst Hospital has a 1.5 rating on yelp. It caters to many minorities, undocumented immigrants, Rikers island inmates, mentally ill and poor people. It never had a good reputation for as long as I can remember. Not that any other Queens hospital is much better but it is one of the worse. The Mayor should stop bragging about how good the hospitals are in NYC.
The CCP admitted the crisis in China in the middle of the holidays, but the virus had been spreading for two months already, and many Chinese citizens either stayed or came here to shelter with their Chinese American relatives since there was no travel ban until January. Queens has the largest Chinese diaspora community in the world, so it’s possible the disease was here since December