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Governor Andrew M. Cuomo said on Monday that New York would reopen an emergency hospital on Staten Island to deal with a new outbreak of coronavirus cases that is straining the capacity of the district’s hospitals.
The announcement is another sign that New York City is in the throes of a second wave of coronavirus that has already led to the closings of public schools, the reversal of some reopens and warnings for families to cut back on Thanksgiving plans. . It also raises the specter of a return to the darker days of the pandemic in March and April.
“Staten Island is a problem,” Cuomo said during a daily news briefing.
The number of hospitalizations in the district has essentially tripled in the past three weeks – to 91 on Sunday from 33 on November 2 – with no indication the pace is slowing, the governor said. He stressed the importance of the increase later in the briefing.
“Hospitalization,” he said, “is a nice way to say that more people are dying.”
He said neighborhoods on the south shore of Staten Island had an average seven-day positive test rate that was unacceptable, especially Tottenville (5.89%) and Great Kills (5.5%).
The high rates have prompted officials to label the southern part of the island as a so-called orange zone, the second most restrictive step in the state’s targeted approach to tackling coronavirus clusters. The rest of the island remains a yellow zone, with less severe restrictions.
The orange zone designation signifies a reintroduction of various restrictions imposed during the first wave of the pandemic: restaurants, gyms and lounges, for example, must close; gatherings cannot exceed 10 people; and places of worship are limited to 33 percent capacity, or 25 people.
Mr Cuomo said the Staten Island Emergency Unit at the South Beach Psychiatric Center will begin taking in patients infected with the virus after officials at Staten Island University Hospital and University Medical Center in Richmond said they were running out of beds.
The mental hospital unit was one of many emergency facilities that were set up in New York City earlier this year to treat patients infected with the virus as the pandemic overwhelmed hospitals across the city.
The Staten Island unit treated about 250 patients from mid-April to June, said a spokesperson for Northwell Health, which operates Staten Island University Hospital. It was due to start accepting recovering coronavirus patients as early as Tuesday and was ready to welcome around 100 patients to start and more than 200 if necessary, the spokesperson said.
James Oddo, president of the Staten Island Borough, said he was not surprised that part of the South Shore was designated as an orange zone and that he was happy to learn that the mental hospital could once again accommodate patients infected with the virus.
The first wave of the pandemic, Mr Oddo said, had effectively transformed Staten Island University Hospital and Richmond University Medical Center into virus-specific intensive care units that were unable to cope with residents’ other medical needs. of the district.
“I don’t think anyone wants to go back to where we were in March and April,” said Mr. Oddo, a Republican. “It has been a really tough time for our healthcare workers and our community.
He said Monday’s numbers were cause for concern, but he was focusing more on the direction of those numbers “in a month, in two months.”
Staten Island has been at the forefront of the resurgence of the virus in New York for some time. We don’t quite know why. “It’s a consequence of the actions,” Cuomo said Monday.
The town, a republican stronghold, has long diverged from the rest of the city culturally and politically. Many Staten Island residents have adopted virus precautions, but others have opposed it, as have residents of Tory strongholds elsewhere.
Two weeks ago, Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, flooded the borough with volunteers to raise public awareness of the problem and measures to combat it. Around the same time, Mr. Cuomo, also a Democrat, tagged most of the borough with the yellow zone designation.
Cuomo also called Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood a yellow zone on Monday, the first time the borough has been targeted for canceling its reopening. He also announced new yellow zones in parts of Long Island and expanded yellow and orange zones in the upstate near Rochester and Syracuse.
The number of people hospitalized with the virus in New York City has more than doubled in the past three weeks, to 2,724 on Sunday from 1,227 on November 2, Cuomo said. This is still well below the spring peak of the pandemic, when more than 18,000 people have been hospitalized.
But Mr Cuomo warned that if current trends continue, New York will reach 6,000 hospitalizations in three weeks. The increase would be greater, he said, if people acted irresponsibly by gathering for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“We are living in dangerous times,” he said.
Michael Gold contributed reporting.
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