Brooklyn nursing home and Staten Island psychiatric center will open as COVID hospitals this week

As 6sqft explained earlier, “with car accidents, construction accidents, trauma cases, and crime all down due to Cuomo’s New York State on PAUSE order,” early estimates that temporary overflow hospitals would be needed have been replaced with a critical need for more COVID beds. To meet this demand, last week, the 2,500-bed temporary hospital at the Javits Center was turned into a COVID-only facility, as was the 500-bed USNS Comfort naval hospital ship yesterday. In addition, both the South Beach Psychiatric Center on Staten Island and the Brooklyn Center nursing home in Weeksville will open this week specifically to treat COVID-19 patients.

So far, the idea has been for the main hospitals to treat all ICU patients (in many cases, those requiring a ventilator), while the temporary COVID locations will treat pre- and post-intensive care unit patients who do not need acute care.

The South Beach Psychiatric Center will add 260 beds, while the Brooklyn Center Temporary Hospital at 170 Buffalo Avenue has roughly 280 beds. Other COVID-only sites that were announced at the end of March were: Westchester Square in the Bronx (200 beds); the Health Alliance in Ulster County (235 beds); and SUNY Downstate University Hospital in Brooklyn (250 beds). A 350-bed temporary medical facility at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens’ Flushing Meadows-Corona Park was planned to open today to treat COVID non-ICU patients

It’s unclear what will happen with the other four locations that had been identified as temporary hospital sites: the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens’ South Ozone Park, the Port Authority-owned Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook, the CUNY College of Staten Island, and the New York Expo Center in Hunts Point in the Bronx. It’s also unclear whether the Cathedral of St. John the Divine will serve COVID patients or not. It was revealed earlier today that the Morningside Heights church will have nine climate-controlled medical tents installed in its 600-foot-long nave and underground crypt by the end of the week to serve roughly 200 patients.

RELATED:

• Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights will become field hospital
• To relieve NYC hospitals, USNS Comfort hospital ship becomes COVID center
• Javits Center will now provide 2,500 COVID beds
• 20 NYC hotels sign on as temporary hospitals, will add 10,000 beds
• All of 6sqft’s coronavirus coverage