As the coronavirus pandemic’s U.S. death toll topped 1,000 people, hospitals and government authorities in New York, New Orleans and other hot spots grappled on Thursday with a surge in cases and a dire shortage of supplies, staff and beds.
For the first time since 9/11, a hospital in New York City is using a series of tents as a makeshift morgue. The city is the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. and is appealing for more doctors, nurses, hospital beds and medical supplies. 4:19
As the coronavirus pandemic’s U.S. death toll topped 1,000 people, hospitals and government authorities in New York, New Orleans and other hot spots grappled Thursday with a surge in cases and a dire shortage of supplies, staff and sick beds.
Medical facilities were running short of ventilators and protective masks, and were hampered by limited testing capacity as the number of confirmed U.S. cases of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, stood at about 70,000.
A running tally kept by Johns Hopkins University later Thursday showed that at least 1,070 people in the U.S. have died.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported an increase of 13,987 cases and 257 deaths in its most recent measuring period, between Tuesday and Wednesday at 4 p.m. ET. The increases in the previous 24-hour period were 144 deaths and about 11,000 new cases.
Over one-third of the U.S. fatalities have been in New York state, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo has warned hospitals could soon run out of beds and ventilators.
In his daily news conference Thursday, Cuomo said that 385 have died in the state from the virus, an increase from the previous day of 100. He said the goal was to get to a hospital-bed capacity of 140,000, up from the current 53,000 available Authorities were scouting new sites to build temporary facilities, he said.
“The number of ventilators we need is so astronomical. It’s not like they have them sitting in the warehouse … there is no stockpile available,” Cuomo said.
Asked about media reports of some New York City health-care workers resorting to using plastic trash bags to try to protect themselves, Cuomo acknowledged issues with the distribution of protective equipment and said there was enough in stock for the “immediate need,” but not for the longer term.
At Elmhurst Hospital in the New York City borough of Queens, about 100 people, many wearing masks with their hoods pulled up, stood in line behind barriers outside the emergency room entrance, waiting to enter a tent to be screened for the coronavirus.
The federal government was sending “everything we can” to he