The coronavirus is set to crush New York City's hospital system and the federal government needs to step in now, council member Mark Levine said.
, the chair of the health committee, has had an intimate look at the burgeoning crisis facing the city’s hospitals, and has been trying to raise alarm over the destruction the virus will reap here if even more drastic measures aren’t taken soon.
We all saw the projections from Italy and elsewhere and I think we intellectually knew what was coming, but there was a point maybe about 10 days ago where we could start to see the number of cases doubling every three to four days. And it immediately became clear that this crisis was upon us and that New York was about to experience something that none of us had ever seen in my lifetime.New York City Council Member Mark Levine at a City Hall hearing about the coronavirus on March 6.
Supplies. Hospitals, I think are running on a one- to two-week supply. People underestimate just how much they burn through in a single large hospital system — like New York Presbyterian can go through a million masks a week throughout its system. That’s not even the whole city. So we just need an enormous amount of supplies. We need 50 million surgical masks to manage this. That’s the number that we’re pushing.
You mentioned that, at this point, New York is kind of largely dependent on the federal government for equipment. If you had a minute to talk to President Donald Trump, what is one thing you would tell him? How long can New Yorkers expect to be working from their homes, to be taking all these types of precautions? Do we know yet?
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